


Lost And Found

by Nouna



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Reverse, Android Gavin Reed, Android Gore (Detroit: Become Human), Android Hank Anderson, Android Suicide (Detroit: Become Human), Blood and Gore, Dismemberment, Elijah Kamski & Gavin Reed are Siblings, GV200 - Freeform, HK800 - Freeform, Human RK800 - 60, Human RK900, M/M, Not Beta Read, Robot/Human Relationships, human RK800
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2020-07-31 04:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20109136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nouna/pseuds/Nouna
Summary: After President Warrens final decision to stop the destruction of androids, Somebody had to clean up the mess and pull all the dusty skeletons out of cyberlifes closets.Richard and his brothers already had their hands full with the Belle Isle raid as something disturbingly special comes to light in cyberlifes laboratories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my twist and try at a reverse AU.  
An action flick for a bit of shallow entertainment.  
Have fun!

Click-click, Click-click, Click-click -...

"Fuck you, Richard! Could you pretty damn please stop that shit?!"

Detective John Mason seemed ready to hurl himself right over the work desk to wrangle the biro out of Richards grip, who kept clicking and clicking and -...  
Sharply Richard shook his head, stopped the mindless motion of his thumb and leaned back into his chair - only to start bouncing his leg instead. He was a mess of spiteful anxiety because his brothers led a damn Team into the depts of almost forgotten cyberlife vaults on Belle Isle and Richard 'was not allowed to be with them'.

It was just two weeks after thousands of Androids marched through Detroit - and still did pretty much. The City was almost vacant of any human life and the new police taskforce supported the Strike-Teams and military as they broke through cyberlifes defenses like in an active warzone to get hold of any- and everything that the company was hiding in the last fifteen years somewhere down in their creepy-ass cellars.

'And Richard was not there!'

A hand slapped down onto his shoulder and almost made him jump out of his own skin. Mason stood above him with a grim expression. "My sister is there as well, you know. "

Richard couldn't really concentrate on what he said, but he nodded anyway. Of course, he wasn't the only one with loved ones on the line. But that thought wasn't helping at all. Richard felt useless and the shame that came with that feeling burned his insides and drained all of his energy.

His brothers were so much more delicate than him, they both thought of themselves as some kind of unstoppable force of nature. Not only had each of them a mind that could dissect any human brain in only a matter of minutes of seemingly casual conversation but were also physically strong enough to overpower opponents twice their slim size.

In direct comparison, Richard, as the youngest of them all, was a damn desk jockey. He was big but had never felt quite as strong. Sly but always with an anxious stutter. Where Silas and Connor went through doors and filled a whole room with their presence alone, Richard was the type of guy who blended in with the people around him and was promptly forgotten without a thought. It made him an exceptionally great detective since he could go mostly unnoticed and people liked to talk to him. He got some confessions just by waiting things out and let them talk like he was an actual shrink or something.

Connor and Silas both got onto the force because of morals and principles. Richard got in because Connor was a self-sacrificing dick.

"If he gets shot again, I'll make him regret it", Richard muttered darkly while his fingers twitched over the armrests of his chair. John snorted with a nod.

"Stop the moaning", spat North, who sat by the old-school radio with her feet propped on her desk and listened to the hundreds of incoming police codes as the teams started to search through the lower levels of that fucking labyrinth cyberlife built underground of Belle Isle. It was absolutely maddening to just sit and wait.

* * *

'Agent Silas Anderson identified - permission granted | model number PSI65 - 07 identified - permission granted'

As if it made any difference these days. The doors of Cyberlifes entrance hall opened like a gaping maw, ready to swallow up any intruders to take any discovered secrets with them to an early grave. Silas felt his skin crawl with nervous energy. Belle Isle was today still kind of an active warzone and he was sure as shit no Soldier.

It wasn't that Silas presence was actually needed here. He could have stayed in his office and coordinated everything from there. But where would be the fun in that?

Aside from that, he had some obnoxious confident twin brother to watch. To piss off Connor was a huge Bonus in this endeavor.

Damn, Silas would never be able to forget Connors ill-white face that night when Detroits androids started to march for their life. Basically at last minute had president Warren stepped in to stop the destruction in these improvised recall centers.

As Silas sauntered through the foyer of the great cyberlife tower, every corner of it was already crawling with federal agents, Police, SWAT - and even the military. In a joint and grant operation, they finally forced all of cyberlifes deepest and darkest secrets to the surface. There was a damn whole lot of dirty laundry to air at this godforsaken place.

"What do you think?", Silas asked his partner as he laid his head back in his nape and tried to get a look at the ceiling that somehow seemed to not exist in this hall. Perkins beside him didn't look impressed, intimidated or -... well he didn't look like he cared at all for any of this. "A highly inefficient building. So much wasted open space. A panopticon structure", he said tonelessly, didn't even twitch a move beyond the necessary.

Maybe it was kind of Perkins fault that Silas had needed so long to catch onto his brothers' feelings about this rather strange... 'android affaire'. While Perkins was a good guy, excellent design and basically a walking, talking PDA - he was nothing else aside from that. Even though Silas was able to empathize even with Roombas and stumbled to call Perkins the 'it' that he ultimately was - Perkins wasn't alive. He wasn't a person, even though he showed minor traits of character and some kind of favorite working structures. But basically, any machine got its quirks like that over enough time. It didn't make them a self-aware intelligent creature.

Not at all like that infamous 'sent by cyberlife' HK800 - or the even better known RK200 who started this revolution all on his own.

Oh, and here they were. Connor sat by that big and ugly statue and shuddered visibly through waves of nervous energy that had to be kind of a family trait while he held onto a paper cup of steaming-... most likely it was cacao, dark and sweet enough to kill at least three dentists on the spot in horror and shame.

Connor nodded to Silas out of hollow, sunken eyes while he held the helmet of his ominous black uniform under his free arm. Silas couldn't help but sniff in utter distaste. "Did he sleep at all before?", he asked the HK unit that his twin brother so lovingly nicknamed 'Hank'. The Android had the audacity to just answers with a disgruntled smile and a shrug.

"You know that you could just ask 'me', right...?!", Connor bit back in a foul mood. Silas shrugged.

"Sorry, I'm late to the party", he said, in a way to avoid his brothers' ire. "Did we miss something of importance?"

Just to be a menace, he plucked the cup out of Connor's hand and took a sip. He regretted it instantly for it was indeed cacao so sweet and thick it felt like honey on his tongue. Connor snorted at Silas grimace. "Waiting for Kamski. The inspection without him is pretty much pointless. It's completely insane. Nobody of these damn technicians knows what they are actually doing here."

Silas wasn't even that much surprised. Cyberlife today was just a pile of misshapen shards that were held together only by the superglue of some clueless billionaires money. The investors decided what was up, what got build, what got discarded and what got better hushed up. It didn't necessarily mean any of these rich fucks actually knew anything about how androids worked or how they were produced and coded. Silas was pretty sure over the last five years the lead technicians mostly copied Kamskis work till it started mutating out of their hands. Deviants, here they were. All because of Kamskis ingenious out of control self-learning algorithms.

Cyberlife produced maybe even knowingly thinking and learning creations and their first instinct had been to put them to work and milk the hell out of them in profits as long as no one caught onto them being a pretty much new intelligent species. It was callous enough to make any honest man utterly sick.

"Hey, Hank", Silas said to get the HKs attention while he shoved that cup of utter distasteful sugar sirup back against his brothers' chest.

The HK turned instantly. His sharp blue eyes glistened and he looked so much more aware and alive as even some humans Silas was forced to work with. It made him still feel nervous around that model and Hank was literally made to take advantage of that. The android smelled his uneasiness like a bloodhound and suddenly grinned a wide smile that reminded of a big white shark. "What can I do for you. 'Mr. Anderson'."

Connor snorted into his cup and broke out into high pitched giggles as he quickly ducked his head in a futile try to hide them. Silas was pretty sure this bullshit just had to do with Connors undying love for the Matrix series and Hanks absolutely infallible talent for mimicry. Aside from the fact that HK800 seemed to just enjoy making Connor laugh.

Silas let out a deep long-suffering sigh and rubbed a hand flat over his face. "What do 'you' think we will find around here?", he asked the HK while he tried to ignore his still gasping brother.

Hank looked so damn pleased to be asked for his opinion. It was weird that he wasn't afraid or... or at least worried since he had been a major catalyst to Warrens final decision. But he seemed confident. More so. Besides Connor, he looked positively content - and strangely happy.

"Even more old skeletons in their closets, I guess", he quipped and looked so damn smug. "Though, there shouldn't be any more Androids around here. The wave woke them all up. No Android is left inside who isn't aware of-... "

He suddenly halted and finally blinked at Perkins. He maybe didn't even notice him till now, through Perkins... well... 'habit' to always stand a step behind Silas. Even more likely because of Perkins broken connection to the designated cyberlife servers.

Perkins stood inert and sharply straight, his hand loosely curled around his left wrist behind his lower back. His eyes didn't follow the conversation and his shoulders didn't move in simulated breathing.

Hanks eyes suddenly widened in an owlish blink as he shifted closer. "Well then, might you just fuck me sideways... ", he muttered in a so very human - so very 'Connor' - manner that a deep and ice cold shiver ran down Silas' spine. "If that isn't one of the 'PSI' series... Didn't think I would ever meet any of them again in my product cycle. "

Connors' eyes shifted from Perkins to Hank till he got curious enough to just ask. "What do you mean?"

Hank hummed as he leaned back and scratched through his artificial beard till another wide grin split his face almost in half. "If you look at it in human terms, this guy's kinda my grandpa."

Silas couldn't help the sour look on his face. In a sudden instinct, he put a hand to Perkins back. Perkins wasn't 'that old' at all.

Hank followed the tiny gesture of companionship and suddenly smiled so sunnily, it was a marvel. No wonder Connor had been so convinced there was a lot more inside the HKs head than cogs and gears even though he had been with him only for two days or three.

"Don't be an annoying dick, HK. I guess even older androids can have hurt feelings", Silas grumbled in Perkins stead - because, Perkins? Perkins didn't care or react at all. It just wasn't right to mock him for something he couldn't help. And interestingly Hank looked kind of abashed, even through his grin didn't vanish.

"I didn't intend to be rude", he said slowly, with more thought to it this time. "To the contrary, it's quite nice. My model was based on the PSI series. It's interesting to see one still in working condition. Cyberlife databanks say they all got scrabbed a while ago. "

Hank smiled in the most friendly way as he watched Perkins, but his expression slowly fell as the other android didn't move. Hanks LED flickered in blinking bursts of yellow and he finally hummed a low note through his assessment. "What did they do to him? Even before my days, guys like us were a lot more... expressive."

Silas blinked from HK to Perkins and could only shake his head, because 'of course' Perkins was a special case.

"Two years ago he got damaged pretty badly", he said and shrugged a little helpless. Because Silas himself never had seen Perkins in perfect working condition, only at his kind of lethargic and silent self right now. "As far as I know, they had to scrab most of his insides through water damage and a busted torso."

He observed Perkins stiff stance and his motionless figure and finally gave a kind of helpless shrug. "He got a pretty bad downgrade but I also heard he saved a lot of lives back then, so I guess-... I 'hope' he still thinks it was worth it."

Hank nodded slowly with wide eyes but still tried to get Perkins to look at him. "Well", he said with a huff that sounded interestingly sure. "The HK and PSI series both were made to please. So I guess he's happy to know he was-... is useful through on-going events. I sure am."

Silas let out a sharp snort and clapped a hand down to Perkins nape to give him a comradely shake. "Downgrade or not, he's still a hero, this guy. Does everything and more my last partner did."

While it was a questionable compliment, Perkins suddenly tilted his head. "Why, thank you, Silas."

Silas felt his fingertips go numb with sudden cold as a deep shudder rushed down his spine. His laugh couldn't hide how uncomfortable he suddenly felt. "Heh... Yeah. Sure, buddy."

Connors partner barked a booming laugh that made Silas almost jump out of his skin, but at least the HK took enough pity on him to spare Silas a comment. With a nod and a wide grin, he blinked again to Perkins. "So he's retired now?"

Silas sighed tonelessly and answered with a shrug. "In a way? Won't do any more fieldwork, sadly. But he still handles all the forms and bureaucracy like a pro."

The HK lifted his eyebrows in a kind of unsettling human gesture. "No fieldwork? Why's he here then?"

"Iii-...uh... he-...", Silas stumbled over his words and stopped before he actually said something stupid. But the HK already grinned like 'that' again. Because he almost got Silas to admit aloud that it wasn't a necessity for Perkins to be with him. That he just liked to have him around - So Perkins wouldn't feel abandoned, useless and lonely at his desk when Silas wasn't there.

Aggressively human empathy - not even once.

Of course, Connor saw it too, but wisely decided to not utter a single word and just looked away while he took a sip at the drink of Silas' nightmares.

The HKs attention was still on Perkins who continued to stand ramrod straight and unmoving.

The HK - 'Hank', Silas reminded himself sharply - blinked slowly, almost as if he did an assessment. And before anyone could stop him, he stretched out his plastic white hand and pressed it to Perkins' shoulder.

Something was transferred with only this one simple touch.

Perkins eyes suddenly followed the outstretched arm until his eyes locked for the first time with the other androids. His LED blinked in hectic bursts of red and yellow while Hank just watched him curiously.

Like before, there was no emotion in his gaze and nothing resembling anything distinctly human in his movements while Perkins' eyes twitched from left to right as if he was working through uncountable strings of new data. He still didn't move. Finally, his eyes locked with Hanks. "Thank you. Eight hundred", he said, lowly.

Hank grinned like a little shit and lifted his fingers in a curled 'ok' gesture. "No prob, Gramps."

That was the exact moment the buzzing noise of a hundred voices in the Lobby hushed down. Aggressive whispers started only seconds later as Mr. Kamski was officially approved by the security system and stalked into the building with an unreadable expression on his pale white face. Silas had a feeling it would end up to be a very long night.

* * *

Since Perkins was kind of classified as a civilian, Silas left him safe and secure in the Lobby where he could mingle a little and act as a contact-port for the other agents that swarmed the building.

Hank didn't get that luxury. He was classified as SWAT unit equipment and was in his status equally important as Connors rifle. Silas was pretty curious about what Hank was actually capable of. The android wasn't even wearing protective gear. Just some kind of standard police issue uniform that made him look lean and lethal just because of his confident movement.

After Connor called his team back together through a harsh bark into the open channel of his walky-talky, they took their places around Mr. Kamski and went off on an adventure down to the deepest cyberlife vaults. Silas followed patiently beside Hank, anytime just a step behind his brother.

Mr. Kamski strode through the corridors with a rather stony expression and didn't talk at all if not asked any direct questions.

If he himself wasn't able to open some doors with his administrated security keys, he let his personal Android do the work for him and hack the electronic locks for them in seconds.

Interesting, thought Silas, that an almost ancient model like the first ST200 could even do that. But maybe this Chloe was a special one-of-a-kind android. It wouldn't even surprise Silas if she could shoot lasers from her eyes since she watched Mr. Kamski and the people around him with the focus of a trained bodyguard. Despite her delicate figure, Silas assumed she was more than capable of breaking the bones of men up to twice her size. No wonder Connors gaze periodically flickered back to her when he was sure no one was watching.

If he didn't already have a partner to keep him on his toes he might have liked her a crazy lot.

"The experimentation and calibration laboratories, gentlemen", Mr. Kamski said gruffly uncountable and mostly uneventful hours later as he opened the security door to the last underground floor there was. Level sub-fifty was buried as deep in the ground as the building towered above Detroit. For Silas, the number alone felt confining and kind of unreal.

The door to the mentioned laboratories was made out of massive steel and was thick enough that the police and military might have wasted at least two full days to break it open without causing structural damage to the building.

Yet again the SWAT unit swarmed out, weapons raised and ready to engage with what-fucking-ever, as they secured the area and moved between empty showcases and sterile dissection tables. Or at least something similar since this kind of equipment was only used to dismantle and analyze defective androids.

It didn't look that bad until Silas noticed dark blue dribbles on the floor and lifted his eyes up to the high ceiling. Dozens of men and women hung right above their heads. Not all of them were complete and in a recognizable human or android shape. All in a row they gently swayed on a high up assembly line, long dead and forgotten. Different models, different types.

Mr. Kamski didn't comment on any of this.

For Silas the sight of all these broken and hanging bodies, even though they were clearly not human in nature, felt unusual nauseating. Hank hadn't anything to say about the stuff he saw, but his in bright yellow and red colors swirling LED made clear that he was unusually occupied.

While Connors SWAT team went through their trained motions, Silas started once more to go through his own.

His job was to find and secure documents and digital storage media to make sure cyberlife didn't get the opportunity to hush anything up that put humans and the remaining androids at risk. Silas could barely hold onto his raging curiosity as he marked the working stations he could see and find for the following investigation of his fellow agents like he already did on the other floors. This was almost overwhelmingly huge casework.

Silas, in his burning excitement, almost danced over the white floor tiles to again huddle up to his brother as his team started to open up the dozens of observation chambers that lined the white walls. They were built in a similar way like interrogation rooms or holding cells. Most likely the wide windows were made out of one-way glass. All of them laid in darkness, whatever inside long abandoned and forgotten.

The shouts of Connors team echoed through the lab. 'Clear!', 'Clear!', 'Empty!', 'A survivor!', 'Clear!'

"This place gives me the creeps", Silas uttered darkly as Connor turned to one of the last closed doors. The mechanism opened easily, but the door seemed to be stuck somehow. Finally and full of his typical impatience Connor utilized his bodyweight and rammed it open a gap wide with his shoulder.

His momentum put him two steps ahead through the doorway - and he almost slipped on the tiles because of a foul-smelling substance that coated the floor and looked all but black in the dim lighting of the cell. "Hank?!", he called out with a note of unease in his voice.

His android partner slipped instantly around Silas and swept his stretched out index finger over the floor to take a sample. Silas shuddered as he actually pressed his fingertip down on his tongue. "It's blood. Mixed sample, different people. In a first estimation, I would say it's at least two days old."

"Reeks like it", Silas complained with a sneer as he took a wide step over the smeared puddle that had gathered right in front of the door. Hank took out his flashlight and found out instantly why. The remains of three people laid right behind the door. Connor had shoved them aside as he pushed it open. One man, two women. All three of them wore erstwhile white lab coats while the man's broken arm still reached up to the door frame as if he had wanted to claw it open with blunt fingernails.

Silas frowned. This room seemed a lot different from the others, even besides the days-old corpses in it. There was no observation window and its dimensions seemed unusual big compared to the other rather narrow chambers. In the upper left corner flashed a small red light, typical for the security cameras that littered the whole tower.

The insides were pitch black through the almost blocked door and it felt weirdly cold like in a freezer.

Silas hummed lowly as he leaned against the door frame and watched Connors take cautious steps ahead into ink-black darkness. "Don't you think you should-..."

A weird, mechanical sound cut through the cell and interrupted Silas low complaints. Some kind of chirping noise that reminded him instantly of a combination of lurking cat and horrifyingly old working stations - almost like a beeping boot-up sequence. Maybe a second later a pair of sharp blue eyes blinked open in the darkest corner of the cell.

Silas got instantly pulled back by Hank who grabbed for his collar and basically threw him backward out of the doorway.

An LED flashed alive in horribly unstable red bursts as the thing moved out of its cowering position way too fast for Connor to properly aim his rifle.

Connor opened fire with a warning shout and the spray of bullets perforated the tiled wall without coming even close to hitting the mark. The thing had grabbed lightning quick for the rifle and rammed it with disorienting force against Connors helmet.

Connors head snapped back in a disconcerting motion while he again almost slipped on the days-old blood on the tiles.

Because of his unsteady stance, the Android easily broke Connors hold on his weapon in terrifying precise movements and smashed him as well as the assault rifle right into the floor. Its foot stomped, thank god, only down on the weapon and basically broke it under his heel like a toy gun. As it further fought to get a hold of Connors arm and neck Hank was already there and stomped the unidentified android away from his partner but at the same time the thing had grappled for Connors gear and had pulled the combat knife out of his belt, only to now use Hanks momentum against him, roll over his shoulder and disable most of the HK800s motor functions with a clean stab through his exposed neck.

The knife was pulled free as fast as it had been used and while Connor shouted in panicked ire, the android dived through a combat role smoothly underneath his outstretched arm right outside the opened door - and in the blink of an eye held Silas down on the floor with the knife risen high over its head, ready to plunge it down right into Silas chest.

All that had happened in the blink of an eye, just the time Silas had needed to stumble backward and fall.

Wide eyed he stared up into that Unmoving face as his heart sized in hammering panic.

\- But the android stopped moving as if frozen into place.

He didn't twitch a single artificial muscle, not even as one of the guys of Connors team turned around and took a shot that almost ripped its jaw off.

"Stop!! Stop, don't!!! Stand down, don't shoot!!!"

Kamski spread his arms like protective wings as he positively threw himself into the direct line of fire, his eyes as wide as Silas's and full of horror while he used himself as a human shield. "Stop!! Don't shoot! Don't kill him!!", he shouted.

'Him' was still hunched over Silas's shuddering frame. The Android didn't twitch, not even in reaction to the blueblood that leaked out of the gruesome wound on its face and dribbled onto Silas's face and neck.

It didn't blink, it didn't breathe. Only its flashing LED showed that something was still happening inside of its damaged skull. Then there was this peculiar chirping sound again. Its eyes flashed stormy grey like literal lights in the dark.

It didn't let go of the knife but its other hand moved up to its damaged and mostly unhinged jaw and clicked it with a forceful movement back into place. Then it finally spoke.

"Detective Richard Arkay identified. Guardian-protocol deactivated. Handler registered. Companion sequence initiated."

Suddenly it stood.

Silas eyes widened as it stretched out a hand in a helpful gesture ready to pull him back onto his feet. Silas hesitated but took it in the end. The Android didn't seem to notice nor care for the shitlessly scared people around it.

"Hello, Detective Arkay. My name is", it didn't say an actual name but got out some grossly distorted mechanical sounds. Static noise and artificial stutters. "I'm the android sent by cyberlife."

Silas had never been this happy and relieved to be an almost carbon copy triplet.

Hank sat wide-eyed at his partners' feet while Connor still pointed his handgun to the androids head.

"If you just fuck me sideways...", Hank uttered, sounding rather breathless.

"Mr. Kamski!!", shouted Connor after he ripped his helmet down, face chalk white with fuming rage. "What the fuck is this?!"

To all of their surprise, Kamski looked sweat-slicked and shaken to his bones. A face the public never got to see.

"It's...", he rasped while panicked moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes. "He's my brother...!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HK800 lends a hand to help out a fellow trashcan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kamski is alowed to have his five emotions.  
In the meanwhile we have some brotherly bonding since Silas and Connor don't walk into each other as often as Connor and Richard.

"What the ever-loving fuck, Mr. Kamski?!", shouted Connor again through grinding teeth after Kamskis words registered - and didn't clear up anything about the incident at all. He looked positively feral, ready to chew through Kamskis neck.

Meanwhile Hank kept his balance on his heels as he sat at Connors feet and visibly tested the remaining range of movement of his limbs. The way his fingers and shoulders twitched made clear that both of his arms seemed to have been disabled by that powerful stab. He didn't even look mad, though. His eyes were wide and curious, transfixed on that android that didn't move and kept smiling at Silas in the most friendly manner. Still and motionless as if he had worked through an unfinished script that now had just... stopped. Silas felt his nose wrinkle up as he leaned back in a slow involuntary reflex of utter discomfort. That thing was just terrifying, even if it didn't do anything.

"He's my brother", repeated Kamski and sounded a lot more in control of himself this time as the wide-eyed panic made room for something that had to be quite badly concealed rage. He still didn't take down his arms, visibly didn't trust any of the guys from SWAT not to precautionary shoot the Android. His nose twitched in a sniff before he spoke over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off of the risen guns. "GV200, stand down. Administration-Code #10072002."

The Android still smiled, didn't move, but answered instantly. "Negative. Administration-Code requires Administration privileges. Instruction declined. Please contact Cyberlife Customer Service."

Silas masked his barked out laughter through a hacking cough as Kamskis eyes slowly fixated the GV over his shoulder. Furious he pressed his lips to a fine white line and looked absolutely scandalized while dark red blotches appeared on his pale white face.

Silas did his best to swallow his inappropriate amusement and tried it himself because it just seemed plausible to him. "GV200?"

Like he already had expected, the Android fell into line just like Perkins. His smile vanished as he dropped the knife, stood up straight and tangled his hands behind his back. "Stand down. Administration-Code #10072002."

The Android blinked. "Positive. Motor functions disabled. Maintenance-Mode activated. Initiating Stasis."

The thing slowly closed its unsettling grey eyes, its body made a last move as it slightly hunched forward - and then it froze like a lifeless puppet. Even its simulated breathing pattern completely stopped. Its LED pulsated in slow neutrally grey circles. Since it looked so very human, Silas couldn't suppress that shiver of unease he felt as he watched it happen.

In the meantime Kamski stared at Silas as if he wanted to set his soul ablaze. He seemed to have a big possessive streak over his 'brother', so Silas lifted his hands in a slow, disarming gesture and took a step back from the Android.

As soon as he was out of the way Kamski rushed in and fretted with fluttering fingers over the Androids motionless damaged skull.

"You could have deactivated him!", he spat without turning around through grinding teeth. Connor had followed the interaction but now looked so damn tired of Kamskis bullshit. "It almost killed my partner as if it was an easy thing to do", he growled through an unusual husky voice as he pressed his hand down on Hanks shoulder while he still held the gun in his left. "It could have harmed or killed anyone of us - including you!"

Together with a frustrated noise Kamski lifted his hands and pushed his fingers into his so neatly tied up hair, pulled it loose out of the bun and made himself look almost wild. "No. No, just - No!", he spat sharply and halfway turned to Connor to gesticulate almost dismissively up and down the GVs unmoving figure. "It-... He wasn't made for that! He wasn't made to harm anyone, he's, he-...", Kamski groaned and pressed his folded hands with a frustrated low groan hard against his lowered forehead.

He visibly took some deep shaky breaths. Connor used the instance to conceal his gun and help Hank back onto his feet. He never took his eyes off of that Android.

Kamski didn't care for him as he lifted an arm and waved shakily for the ST200. "Honey. Could you please get me this one down? The one with the #TQ5-17?", he asked her without any clarification to anyone whatever he meant.

The ST200 didn't twitch a facial muscle as she strode over to one of the main terminals and laid her hand down. Just a second later a SWAT guy shrieked and jumped as just a step beside him an Android corpse crashed to the tiled floor. Some of its more delicate biocomponents weren't protected by a standardized plastic shell and so they cracked and shattered to bloody blue pieces on the ground.

Kamski was instantly on it and worked its lifeless white faceplate off of its head with an elegant silver pocket knife before he went on without any shame and pulled out parts and components of the dead body he needed to repair the GV.

With most of the GVs damage could be dealt this way. But a stubborn visual glitch cracked over its slightly crooked nose and exposed the white plastic underneath in an angrily edged white line that reminded instantly of a human scar. Kamski wasn't pleased. At all.

Multiple times his thumb caressed over the glitch as if in the hope he could just wipe it away. The look in his eyes turned rather dark as it, of course, didn't work out. "Be thankful that I won't be able to sue you for this", he growled and the SWAT guy who took the shot swallowed noticeably while he looked for help at his Captain.

Connor snorted in an unusual aggressive manner while he folded his arms in front of his chest. "Thankfully noted", he answered not thankful or relieved at all. "Now. Are you able to repair an HK800 prototype android?!"

Kamski twitched and looked over his shoulder. In a way, he seemed almost offended. "Sure I am, what are you-..."

"Then do it, I've got no fucking time for this!", Connor barked sharply and pointed at Hank - who for whatever reason looked strangely amused by all of this. As Connors icy glare turned to him, he looked away instantly and slightly moved his body so his useless arms swung innocently around him.

Silas tried his best to school his face into a more appropriate expression. It was hard work.

"What makes this one your brother?", he asked, more to distract himself while he took some steps around the GV. It was an unusually detailed Android. Little scars everywhere in combination with a very human, slightly asymmetric, face. It looked utterly convincing, which was rather strange since Androids usually were designed to look smooth and kind of perfect - aside from Hank who was the first model Cyberlife really tried to integrate into a workforce that comprised of a majority of humans. "It's an Android, as you said. Or did you start up a super secret cyborg-business while no one was watching anymore?"

Kamski snorted loudly while he inspected the damage made to Hanks neck. "Of course he's an Android, you utter imbecile!"

Connor pointed sharply at Silas. "Shut it, we do this later. Whatever, the guy is a cyberlife Android. He's functional, which means he's a victim."

His gaze flickered over his shoulder to the cell the Android broke out of. To the one with the dead people inside. "For now at least."

* * *

"You think the thing's alive?", asked Silas as he sat down beside Connor, both of them waiting for Kamskis okay the moment Hank was ready to go.

Connor shrugged. "Don't know. Doesn't seem like it, but that doesn't mean much these days."

Silas snorted and crossed his legs while his foot twitched impatiently up and down. "To whom am I talking to. You saw one of the guys and decided almost instantly that Tinman had a heart."

Connors offended glare made him giggle. "The first time I met Hank, I had no time for this bullshit either", he said as he pointed his index finger around in a wide circle. "Remember the case with that little girl on the rooftop in September?"

"Oh, yes. What a nightmare..."

"Exactly", Connor muttered and crossed his arms so tightly in front of his chest, the artificial leather of his uniform made a strained sound. "Hank showed up there as the crisis negotiator, picked up a fish from the floor that got swept out of a damaged aquarium to put it back, nosed around, didn't talk to anyone and saved the girl by shoving her captor off the roof. Befor he did that, he also made sure an injured officer didn't bleed to death. He got the back of his head shot to pieces. The poor girl was traumatized - but, thanks to him, at least alive."

Connor visibly shuddered, pulled a rather angry face and leaned back into his chair before he tilted his head to Silas. "Some weeks later he suddenly showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the god damn night, told me cheerfully about a bomb threat at Hemwick station and basically complimented me into my uniform, before he gave me a fucking coffee he got on the way to my house and drove me to my next assignment. I didn't even realise he was an Android until he pulled up his hair. You should have seen this."

Silas couldn't even imagine a scene like this, but something about a sleep drunk Connor who couldn't even see one step ahead of himself felt quite funny to him. "Didn't he wear his uniform?"

Connor wrinkled his nose. "Of course he did. That's why I was so out of it. I couldn't imagine that they would put a rooky even temporarily into one of those. Also, he looked way too old to even 'be' one. This whole night felt absolutely fucking unreal, man."

Connor slowly shook his head. "The first HK model on the Rooftop acted extremely limited. It did its job marvelously, but you could see that it had clear mission parameters it could not cross. Hank has nothing in common with that one, at all. Said he got an upgrade of his social relations program so he could learn from interactions with humans."

Silas nodded and tried not to stare too obvious as Kamski opened up Hanks spinal ports and fished in the inside of his neck for cut cables. "Seems pretty high-tech. Why is he with you again?"

Connor pulled a face and bounced his knee. "Never say I don't need him. Damn, I never noticed how hard organizing all of this shit is until he showed up."

In a mix of angry exasperation and tiredness, Connor rubbed a gloved hand over his face. "He was meant to be a Detective, but just some days prior Lieutenant Fowler announced his early retirement. Just didn't want to deal with him on his last case."

Silas snorted a low laugh. "Guess so. Detectives not good enough for the test run?"

Connor waved it away. "'Course not. Cyberlife wanted him to be in a leading position to force him to work and interact with as many humans as possible. Now take a guess which team was a man short anyway?"

Silas cringed instantly. Connor didn't take the loss of his late teammate gracefully last summer. Maybe it would have been different if it had been a dangerous miscalculation or anything he could have blamed on someone or even on himself. But Arthur Lockwood died because he got startled by a massive dog and simply fell down a staircase. The landing had been... quite unfortunate. It had been just plain stupid bad luck.

"Now", Connor uttered after he forcefully cleared his throat. "Hank said he didn't remember me exactly but Cyberlife transferred the memories of the other model into him as his first learning experience."

Silas eyes widened as he slowly turned around. "These fuckers made him remember 'his own fucking death'...?!"

Connor nodded while he fumbled a coin out of his pocket and finally flipped it over his thumb. "Yep", he said with a plopping sound and worked the coin around his leather-clad fingers. "They were just bastards like that. To give me a fill of empathy, all Hank had to do was to tell me about what they did. To him, to the others. He was so utterly human, of course, I didn't question it. Imagine someone tells Rich he doesn't count as human because he doesn't speak or act the right way - as if that never happened before."

Connor frowned through a frustrated huff. "I knew and still know it's not the same, but... it made me mad, anyway."

Silas gave a low hum. "If someone tells you how, or even 'that', they think and feel, who are you to 'correct' them about it."

Connor pointed right into his face and nodded. "That's the thing."

Silas hummed again in thought, but finally, his lips curled into a wide smile. "Aaaw, no. My guess is you got yourself into a massive crush and just decided it was worth a potential robot apocalypse."

Connor slowly turned around to him with an absolutely unreadable expression on his face while his ears turned slightly pink. "Basically yes. Don't be a jealous bitch about it."

* * *

Hank rolled his head over his shoulders and moved his arms in almost gracefully slow motions to test his repaired range of movement. His Fingers seemed to work fine. As he stretched there seemed to be no problems to lift his arms high over his head. Kamski nodded and waved him off. "Fine to go", he said. "Just... get yourself some proper maintenance later. I metaphorically repaired you with duck tape and a paperclip."

Hank waved him off in almost exactly the same manner. It looked kind of creepy. "Oh, it's alright. I'm made to be almost unbreakable anyway", he said flippantly, as his eyes already searched distractedly for the GV Android.

"You will do as he says", barked Connor as his face scrunched into a deep and angry frown. Hank froze up instantly. As he slowly turned around, there happened to be a dark glint in his eyes and he spoke while a rather sharp and cold grin split his lips unsettling wide. "As you say. Daddy."

Connors face flushed all at once in enraged dark red while Silas almost fell out of his seat in hacking laughter. Hank didn't seem to like it at all when someone - anyone - tried to give him harsh kind of orders, now.

As Connor slowly bared his teeth like a rabid dog, Silas tried to school his face back into a mask of vacant professionalism - and promptly snorted with laughter once more as soon as his gaze crossed Hanks again.

"Are we finished here?", asked Connor rather clipped, but Hank didn't pay his dark mood much mind. Instead, he lurked in slow but steady steps around the GV200 like a curious cat.

"What is it?", asked Kamski and suddenly looked quite alarmed. Hank slowly furrowed his brows and rubbed through his slightly tangled beard. "You really sure he's fine to leave here?"

Yes, now Kamski looked alarmed, indeed.

"What do you mean?", he asked and narrowed his eyes as they twitched between the two Androids in an obvious expression of impatience. "What do you see?!"

Before anyone could stop him, Hank stretched out his hand to the GVs left shoulder and forced an interface. His eyelids fluttered in that typical way before he tore his hand back after just some seconds as if he had been burned. A deep frown etched itself into his face and made him look way older in human terms as he rubbed his hands in deep thought slowly together. "There is a lot... not exactly 'wrong', but also... not exactly 'right' with him", he murmured under his artificial breath. "His Operating system is an earlier released system version of mine, which strikes me as kinda odd. It's not completely identical, so his technicians seemed to have tried to make him... unique."

He tilted his head again as if it helped him to look at what he saw from a more literally different perspective.

"It looks kind of like someone had tried to stuff the poor guy full of programs his hardware just wasn't made to execute properly. He has protocols for the maintenance of analyzing tools, but not one compatible biocomponent. There is also a secondary self-preservation protocol that seems completely useless for a build as fragile as-... He was based on the Tracy product-line, wasn't he?"

Kamski slowly nodded. "Because they were the most convincing human models, ye-... what do you mean, 'was'...?!"

Kamskis pupils shrunk to pinpoints under a sudden spike of stress that also made an appearance in his breathlessly angry voice. "What did they do to him?!"

Hank narrowed his eyes. "They played around with his insides, is what they did", he stated. The distaste on his face had to be the most human expression Silas got to see from him so far. "There are still parts left from a Tracy model, but mostly his skeleton was molded around the M100 line. His Thiriumpump doesn't even have a scannable serial number, but its makeup mostly looks like mine. They obviously tried for a fusion for whatever reason and drastically reduced his weight."

Silas felt a sudden wave of pity for the poor thing. "Aren't M100s military scout models?", he asked and tried to understand what had been the end goal to this experiment. But then he got to think, that this was maybe even all it was in the end - an experimental android. Another prototype, just not ready for a mission objective like Hank had been.

Too bad this poor guy had once belonged to someone who cared.

Kamski seemed to come to the same conclusion. His gaze turned dark and bitter. The ST200 beside him slightly leaned into him, even though her blank expression never changed.

Hank tilted his head. "There are also missing drivers for most of his basic functions. It's why he moves so clunky."

Kamski closed his eyes and took a deep breath that visibly moved his shoulders. Again he folded his hands and pressed his fingertips tightly to his lips in silent prayer before he stood up straight and looked at Hank with an unsettling dark shadow in his gaze. "Please, check for a folder #900Reed.2026.11 for me, will you?"

Hank observed Kamskis mannerisms for a second or two but then nodded and again stretched out his hand. Once more he worked himself through the GVs system files. Slowly his head tilted again. His mouth opened in an expression of sudden understanding.  
He looked rather upset as he narrowed his eyes. His gaze turned sharp. "It's still there."

Kamski breathed a sigh of visible relieve, so bone-deep and heavy, it made Silas feel quite uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Thank god!", Kamski murmured while he pressed his chin down on his chest.

Hank looked as if he didn't quite want to, but then spoke anyway. "It's full of heavily encrypted and corrupted data. Voice files, pictures. Some custom settings, but mostly a whole lot of junk. Fragmented stuff. Whatever they did to him, the files in that folder got copied around a whole damn lot. Dunno if there's much to save."

Kamski swallowed and stared down at the GV, almost two inches smaller than him. "Can you save 'him'?", he finally asked and lifted his gaze to Hank with a shock frozen glint in his eyes.

Hanks only answer was a docile smile that made absolutely clear he had no fucking idea - but of course, would try anyway.

"Don't interrupt the interface. It could seriously damage my system", he said right before he pressed his hand for the last time down onto the GVs left shoulder.

There had to be a lot of stuff that needed some kind of fixing since Hanks eyelids twitched in rapid movement while his LED stroked from blue to yellow with some sudden blips of alarming shades of red. Whatever he did, he did it inhumanly fast but still managed to take his time.

Connor had sat himself down again and impatiently stretched his legs while his eyes never left Hanks figure. He still flipped his coin in rapid distracted motions between both of his hands. Silas put his head down in his hand and just rested his eyes for a little bit. It didn't seem like he would miss something important for quite a while.

Seemingly hours later he twitched out of light sleep because of Hanks deep disconcerting voice. "Done", he uttered as his brows furrowed into a displeased frown.

Kamski, who also sat down some time ago, jumped in an instant onto his feet and almost skidded over the tile floor in his haste to get to the GVs side. "What did you do?", he asked breathlessly fast, almost mushing the words together.

Hanks gaze still fixated the other Android while his head tilted slightly from one side to the other, seemingly searching for something. "I copied a lot of my own system files for him", he murmured lowly, sounded kind of like a kid that did something forbidden but was born to be a rebel. "A few drivers too, to make him more functional. He now should have a lot more control over himself."

Slowly Hank crossed his arms in front of his chest - a perfect mimicry of Connors agitated mannerism. "I tried to give him a copy of my social relations program, too, since he was just so... 'empty' inside. There were no social features at all. We have to see if it works. At least the software is compatible enough."

Kamski went almost brutally for Hanks left arm and tore him around at the fabric of his uniform - the movement so quick, vicious and unexpected that Connor besides Silas jumped to his feet, ready to get Kamski away from his partner. He only halted because Silas pressed both of his hands to his chest.

"Did you alter him?!", Kamski growled like something wild and narrowed his eyes in a highly dangerous manner. Hank, interestingly, wasn't really bothered by Kamskis aggressive attitude. He simply shook his head.

"Not more than necessary as to give the guy at least a chance to actually realize that he's a thinking, living being", he said flatly and folded his arms on his lower back. His gaze again flickered to the GV model, still so very much intrigued by it. "Whatever they did to him here, his software was scrabbed. There was barely anything actually functional left inside. The thought that he at one point had been like me and was reduced to 'this'..."

Hank frowned and shifted his tongue through his mouth in a so very human way to express his silent rage.

Kamski stared at Hank without a single motion. He just seemed to process something insanely difficult. Then he swallowed and lowered his gaze before he lifted his head to examine the GV Android. He blinked some more, tried to get rid of the watery sheen in his eyes. Finally, he opened his mouth, but couldn't say a thing. His throat moved as he swallowed around something thick. "Can you wake him up?", he croaked.

Hank looked down at Kamski with an indefinable expression. Then looked at the GV Android. His LED blinked through some yellow cycles before he made his decision. Hank forced once more an interface.

"Does he have a name?", he asked, his voice suddenly hushed and quite soothing. Kamski nodded, almost mechanically.

"Gavin", he croaked, almost toneless. "His name's Gavin."

Hank nodded slowly. "Well then, Gavin."

His plastic white hand flashed with a blue shine. "It's time to wake up, now."

Silas was basically on the tips of his toes to get a good look at what was happening now.

At first the GV didn't do anything - but its LED went from neutral grey and started to glow once more in unsettling red pulses. One time, two times, three times-....

As it finally came online, the GV rolled its shoulders back. Then it pulled itself into an upright stance. Its arms folded once more on its lower back in that ingrained 'parade rest' position that seemed to be a thing for lots of Androids.

Only as its position was perfectly straight and still, it opened its icy grey eyes. Unmoving it blinked up into Hanks face. Its LED never showed another color than a warning red. It didn't move further. It didn't say anything.

Hanks brows slowly furrowed into a soft and kind of sad expression of disappointment.

"Gavin...?"

Elijah Kamskis voice sounded brittle and somehow... haunted. The light in his eyes got dulled by a layer of frightful tears he obviously didn't want to acknowledge to anyone. He stretched out his hand and hesitantly touched 'Gavins' arm as if to gently shake it out of a daydream.

The GV didn't move its head - but its eyes moved sharply and quick like lightning. It looked down at the hand on its arm, then at the human face. There was a kind of awareness in Its eyes that hadn't been there before.

Slowly it opened its mouth - but what came out of it was only again this horrible glitching noise. Gavins jaw twitched with it and for Silas it didn't seem quite sure if the Android even realized it made that sound.

A kind of glitchy uneven blink twitched over its face and finally, the unsettling noise stopped in its artificial throat. Its eyes narrowed down sharply. "Lijah, tell those stupid fucks I want to 'go'."

Kamski stared at that rude prick in wide-eyed wonder before he pressed his folded hands to his quivering lips again. His sudden grin was wide and full of heartfelt relief that made him unsteady hold onto the ST200s arm. "Shut your face, you damn useless mean machine!", he forced out of a throat, almost fully clogged with too much emotion.

Hank watched the GV surprised while his face slowly split into a truly delighted grin.

Almost on the other side of the room, Connor uncomfortably cleared his throat and clapped his hands loudly together to gather all of their attention. "Well then, guys and gals - there's the fucking door!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The brothers are triplets who went through the system but never lost track of each other. So we have:
> 
> Connor Stern  
Richard Arkay  
Silas Anderson
> 
> And yes, if you are thinking it, you've got me. I just couldn't decide on one name for all three of them xD


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kamski has to bring up at least 'something' in defense of his beloved creation. So he tells Connor the story how GV200 came to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning:
> 
> This chapter has mentions of past suicide and drug dependence.
> 
> Basically Gavin 1.0 major character death. 
> 
> »Handle with care«

Richard worked himself through his sixth status report when Detective Chen and her team got called to a newly discovered crime scene at cyberlife tower. Something about a bunch of dead people in a closet space...? The precinct got even emptier as additional colleagues got called into action or finally clocked out for the night.

Richard didn't want to go as long as he hadn't got some kind of feedback from both of his brothers, so he stayed even though his brain seemed to melt away under the stress of an allnighter these days.

He wasn't that old, but definitely too old for this shit. His eyes itched and he started to feel slightly nauseous.

The clock almost struck seven am as his ringing cellphone startled Richard strongly enough out of his sleep-deprived thoughts to make him flick his biro in a frightened reflex up in the air. Clumsily he reached out and caught it just barely between his fingertips while he slammed his free hand down onto his phone before it could vibrate off of his desk.

"Detective Richard Arkay, central DPD, who's-..."

"Don't need the full shtick, Rich", he was interrupted by Connor because he just was that kind of an rude asshat. Prick. "Is there a Chance the Captain's back in the building? Can't get him on the line."

Richard rolled his eyes, but leaned back anyway to search around. Mason and North were both still working side by side while checking in regularly intervals on the radio channels. Only listening to the ongoing investigations and writing up reports like Richard did. But aside from them the bullpen was empty and the Captains office dark and closed off. "Not in, I fear. Didn't you meet him at Belle Isle?"

"Shoot!!", Connor groaned into his side of the phone. "No, must have missed him there."

Richard slowly nodded in tired understanding. "I guess he's taking care of the media circus for now. A press conference was set up for eleven am today."

"What, already?!"

Connor never seemed to have a grasp on what the rest of the department was doing. Richard rolled his eyes again and almost met the restrictions of his own anatomy. "Are you and Silas alright? I heard something about dead people-..."

"Oh sure, an experimental killing machine got them, attacked Hank and almost killed Silas-..."

\- "...- What?!"

"...- But its face recognition was thrown off so it thought Silas was you and didn't kill him in the end. Everything is fine. Basically an ordinary day at cyberlife."

Richards suddenly way too numb feeling lips twitched as he opened and closed his mouth multiple times, while an irritated frown darkened his eyes. "Are you... are you fucking with me?! Connor, you know I can't tell!"

A snort from the other side made him twitch. "No, actually. That's exactly what happened. Get ready, we are on our way back."

Immediately Richard leaned over his table to pull his notepad free from under his keyboard. "What do you need?"

Connor seemed to argue some harsh sentences with someone in his close proximity. Richard only heard muffled somethings and understood absolutely nothing of what was happening until Connor spoke to him again. "Get the interrogation room ready. We have two witnesses we need some kind of statement from."

Richards brows furrowed again slowly into a deep and dark frown. "Some kind of statement...?"

He almost could see Connor waving his questions away in a mincing gesture. "You'll see soon enough. One of them could be a little bit twitchy and traumatized. You know, Android. You know how to handle those?"

Richards nose slowly twitched up into a toothless snarl. "Connor. Of all the three of us, I'm denoted as the sensitive child."

\- "My entire fucking arse, Richard."

"Connor, did today already someone tell you to go and fuck yourself?"

\- "...maybe?"

"Good", muttered Richard after a deep huff and a strong pinch to the base of his nose. "Just-... just get them in. Text me some baselines and I will get from them whatever it is you need."

\- "Aren't you a precious smarty, Rich."

Annoyed Richard stared almost for a solid minute at the cellphone in his hand before he lifted it again to his ear. "Go and sit on a cactus. I'm glad you and Silas are alright."

He disconnected the call before Connor could get another asinine comment out. Richard's hands shook slightly since he still got anxious around his brothers, even just over a god damn phone call. He never could stop this immature expectation of a hard slap against the back of his head - or of an improvised brawl because he spaced out again and didn't notice he was staring at one of them just this one second too long.

Richard took a deep breath and fought himself with a low groan out of his seat whereupon he put himself to the task list now laid out for him. Whatever Connor was about to bring in - it absolutely couldn't be any worse than the half-starved alpine mountain dog from last summer.

* * *

As Connor and Silas made their appearances, Richard had worked himself through Connors short and honestly quite horrifying list of texts, as well as turned up the heat in the holding cells and the one interrogation room. It was a favored tactic to keep the rooms cold, almost like a freezer. Richard wasn't into that kind of stuff. Aside from the fact that he couldn't even intimidate his suspects if he actually tried, he had to sit in the same damn room with them and didn't like to freeze his balls off while doing so.

He was so god damn glad he decided for decent temperatures because Silas didn't bring just any witness in. He brought in Detroit's most well-known man of the century like what the fucking hell was he doing with Elijah fucking Kamski?!

Richard almost creaked his neck as he turned while they went along the corridor past his work desk.

Between Connor and Hank the Android was brought along. Richard's eyes went even wider. What the hell was going on? This was not a commercial model, he would know its face!

Richard had made a point in his youth and young adult years to know as much about any kind of android as he was able to fit into his head. He new the available faces, the model numbers, their purpose, their introduction dates, and specifications - he knew everything!

And still he had never ever seen an android of this build or with this kind of movement routine. It walked as if it wasn't quite finished. Did they find a last cyberlife prototype?!

Richards heart hammered away inside his chest. Oh, he wanted to know everything...!

The first thing he realized was that this android if it was a prototype or just a defective custom model, was not only twitchy - it had to be downright broken in a way. Its LED didn't switch even for a blink from its alarming red color.

Its fingers seemed stiff as if it wasn't used to movement just yet. It clawed them into the folds of a washed-out grey DPD hoody, clearly one of Connors. The android ducked into the fabric as if it wanted to hide in it. At the same time, the stare of its grey eyes was unmovingly fixated on Connor's hand on its shoulder. It was a miracle Connor hadn't been bitten yet.

At least he wasn't in further danger since he now switched responsibilities with Silas to take care of Mr. Kamskis statement.

Connor pressed his hand down onto the fingerprint lock and opened the door before he nodded to Richard to come closer. "Can you help sixty and watch the tin man for me?"

"Sure", answered Richard instantly wide awake while he tried and failed to not look too excited. "Morning, Hank!"

"Good Morning, Detective Arkay", was the HKs good-natured answer as he gently pushed Mr. Kamski past them through the door.

Connor flicked his nose. Richard hated that.  
"I mean it Rich. Watch the guy. It's astonishingly silent so far. I'm pretty sure it doesn't like humans at all."

Richard rubbed his nose. "We'll see. Go and get that statement."

Connor turned with a hummed low note. "Whatever you say, Mum."

Thank god the door fell shut because Richard felt that familiar urge to throttle his oldest twin brother senseless. He took a deep calming breath before he turned around. He almost laughed as he witnessed Silas awkward stare as he stood beside the unidentified android. Well, if Connors texts had been accurate, then this android was capable of huge and dangerous things. Fast and nimble like nothing before it. Well, Richard just wouldn't give it a reason to harm him.

"Hey, Silas. In for a coffee?"  
\- "You kidding?! I want a white russian!"

* * *

Kamski sat down without a word or noise of any sort so Connor did the same. Meanwhile, Hank positioned himself behind him, folded his arms against his lower back and stood still as a sentinel.  
Connor let Kamski brood since it had been Kamski himself who had wanted to come forward with something in defense of that mystery-bot.

Kamski stared inertly down at his own distorted reflection on the silver table surface. As Connor almost ran the risk of falling asleep on the job he finally decided to talk.

"I am a genius with a measured IQ of over 140 points", he said flatly. Connor didn't twitch a facial muscle. If that hadn't been the greatest conversation opener he had ever heard. "I was born that way and always have been a bright little pipsqueak as far as I can remember - and I remember a lot. I have eidetic memory."

Finally his eyes blinked upwards again. Kamskis gaze was sharp and cutting as if he was able to take Connors measurements by one simple look alone and discovered details no one else had ever paid attention to. He surely knew how to make people he talked to feel instantly uncomfortable. Connor had no reason to doubt Kamski on his words there, but...

"So...?", he asked rather confused after a moment of uncomfortable silence. Kamski still cut him open with his stare. His nose twitched. "Point is", Kamski said deliberately slow. "I was a gifted miracle child while my older brother was decidedly not. Our father did not like or understand that."

His brows slowly furrowed into a deep and dark scowl, so much emotion on that usually so pale and blank face, as his upper lip twitched up to expose his left canine tooth through a snarl. "Gavin was my older brother by five years. We didn't look much alike. He always had been a little bit on the short side, but he had been a headstrong boy, loved to get dirty and to brawl. Everything boys liked to do."

Connor decided for a neutral expression since he had a wild hunch where this rather random story was heading. Not all families could be expected to treat their children well. Something he and his brothers were intimately familiar with.

"As to my knowledge", Kamski said and leaned back into the creaking backrest of his chair. "Our father had always been a... rather unpleasant person. From passive-aggressive to aggressive-aggressive, he ticked all the boxes."

Kamski made a wide flippant gesture with his right hand. "He liked to humiliate Gavin and make him look like a fool in front of other people. Gavin had already been a boy in favor of physical strength and violence, but father turned him outright into an always angry and bitter bully. Because I was born."

Admittedly, Connor hadn't expected Kamskis life story. But since the man called that experimental android outside the door his brother, Connor figured a dark history had to be buried somewhere. Slowly he tilted his head while the fingers of his right hand played nervously with his coin. "He wasn't pleased to have a mastermind under his roof?"

Kamski chuckled lowly without any sign of honest amusement. "Oh, he 'was' pleased with me. Even though he let me know every day that he would have preferred me to be less of a shut-in, more of a man. More like Gavin."

Connor frowned and rubbed his nose. "I guess, your brother in return was told every day that he wasn't the brightest and should feel bad about that?"

Kamski nodded. "Exactly. Maybe everything would have turned out fine if I had been born average. We both would have grown up to be emotionally unstable young men with anger management issues, but... we both would have made it."

Kamskis anger cold gaze sunk down to the table surface once more and made clear without any words that poor Gavin 'hadn't' made it. A quite sad and horrible story. Connor breathed a silent sigh.

Kamski sat up straight and folded his hands on the table. His voice sounded rather hollow, almost as if he had flicked a switch. "I was born a genius and Father made sure that all of Gavins questions centered around the horrible tragedy of 'why he wasn't one, too'. Our own Father used my existence against him. He made my brothers live a living hell."

Connor had to deliberately move his jaw as he noticed his hurting teeth. He took a deep breath and rubbed his fingers over his mouth. All of that hit a little bit too close to home for him. "Didn't your Mother ever step in?", he asked.

Kamski shook his head. "No. But I am no longer angry at her. She had been young as she got us. Young and shy. Easily pressured and frightened. She didn't know how to stand up to him and had been on her own without friends or family aside from him. I'm sure she had been scared of a possible divorce, too. Without a perspective, she had nowhere else to go. We were all trapped with him."

Kamski spoke calmly and clearly like he meant it. But also like someone who went through memorized lines. Like... maybe from previous therapy sessions. Too close to home, indeed. It gave Connor goosebumps all up to his neck. "So what happened? To Gavin, I mean."

Kamski smiled. An expression like a frozen pond.

"By fifteen he already had been a drug-dependent mess. As I turned thirteen and got an acceptance letter from Detroit university for robotics and engineering he bullied our mother into co-signing the legal paperwork for my emancipation process. Gavin left home the moment he turned eighteen, but not without getting me out as well."

Not much imagination was needed to come to the conclusion that Kamski had loved his brother and might even had been loved in return. Both of them against the rest of the world. "To be finally away from his tormentor hadn't been enough to save him?", asked Connor but already knew. Of course, it hadn't.

Kamski closed his eyes and crossed his arms tightly in front of his chest. "He dropped completely off the grid as soon as I was settled in my dorm. I wasn't able to find him again until three years later through...", his eyes snapped up and turned sharply on Connor. "Some legally questionable methods."

Connor didn't blink. Whatever Kamski had done back then, it all had happened, what, some twenty years ago? Nobody could harass him for that crap anymore. So Connor shrugged.

"When I finally found him, Gavin had already been in a very bad place", Kamski spoke lowly after a short pause. "Had gotten himself into a gang of some sort. Not surprising, really. He only cared for the drugs to numb it all down. Had given up on himself and everything..."

Kamski frowned and stared a burning hole into the silvern table. "And while I already had the means to somehow help him out of it, I had been still a kid back then. I had been so very afraid of approaching him. What should I say? What would 'he' say? Would he even want or accept my help? Would he want me to know what he was up to in the first place?"

Kamski looked up again and Connor recognized a kindred soul full of past regrets. He swallowed after clearing his throat didn't do the trick anymore. "So you didn't reach out to him?"

Again Kamski shook his head. "No. By the end of the year, his body was found in a drug den. Overdose. As I have been told he died alone in a pool of his own vomit on a bathroom floor."

Connor sucked in a sharp breath and pulled a face in heartfelt compassion. A bitter ending for a guy who most likely didn't deserve it. Just... absolutely awful.

Kamski smiled again in this frozen, almost aggressive manner. "It's appropriate to say, I didn't take the news well. What you and Agent Anderson escorted out of the tower was my way to cope."

A way to-... "Ah!", Connor slowly shook his head. "You lost me there. After the loss of your brother, you came to the conclusion that you maybe could just rebuild him? That's not it, is it?!"

His puzzled face made Kamski laugh but it still sounded anything but genuine. "No, at least not at first. The GV outside is an ancient project. Basically, the first android that ever existed. Even older than Chloe."

Kamskis wide smile turned rueful and rather pale. "I built him because I needed to feel like I had control over 'something'. At first, he was just... a thing. Nothing noteworthy about it. Just some cogs and wires without a name or a face. But I still couldn't let go of it."

Kamskis eyes twitched to the door while his index fingers tipped nervously against his elbows. "The GV wasn't made to ever be finished. With every milestone I passed, with every update I created I also altered his design, his inner structure - 'everything'. He was in flux, never complete. As the Tracy line went into mass production I used its structure to create a version of my brother that never got to exist. Just because I couldn't stop grieving and also just because I could."

His gaze went back to Connor as he slightly lowered his head. "The GVs appearance is modeled after all the big and little things I remembered about Gavin. I gave him a face that could have become his and a voice that is close to the audio logs I still have from our time together. To work on him felt like I was not only giving myself but also 'him' a second chance."

Weirdly sentimental if you asked Connor. And surely not the best way to handle loss in general. "So you got yourself pretty much attached", he said slowly with a frown. "How did he end up in the cellar then?"

Kamski sat back into his chair again while a deep but voiceless sigh visibly deflated his chest. "Since I never stopped working on Gavin, he basically turned into everyone's prototype. From body structure to operating system, he never stayed the same. He was also the first android with experimental social features", he nodded at Hank as he said that. "And simply was an outstanding piece of technology. But as the years went by and I got more and more isolated by my position, I simply couldn't resist the thought any longer to rebuild something we both never got."

Again his gaze flickered to the door. Nervous and overprotective. "I fed him every data set I could find of my late brother, adjusted his speech pattern and even his quirks and movements. Together we built up the most fine-tuned social relations database that ever existed. To talk to him suddenly felt 'real'. He could do leaps of logic in irrational ways like humans do but also had a built-in talent for observation and deduction like me. He was utterly unique in that way."

Kamski fell silent and visibly went through some vivid memories. Some of them seemed good enough to almost make him smile, even though his expression turned once more rueful. "I was so proud of him and it felt real. Genuine. But the day came when I woke up and felt utterly horrified. Because I couldn't deal with my childhood trauma, with my loss, and decided to play god instead. To rebuild an actual person into a glorified toy."

Kamskis eyes went dark as he lowered his gaze onto the table again while he moved his grinding jaw. "I shut him down, closed the lab and never came back."

Most likely it was also the day Kamski decided to go for professional help. Connor breathed a deep huff of some kind of relief. "He was down there, ever since?"

Kamski smiled again in a way that exposed his canine tooth in a snarl full of old and bitter rage. "As you know, surely, I was voted out of my own corporation. I was furious, reckless and impulsive as I signed the legal papers. When everything was done I remembered Gavin for the first time in years, who was still located inside my laboratory. I wanted him back. They could have anything else for all I cared, I just wanted him back."

His balled fist slammed down onto the table in a purely emotional outburst. Something sincere and purely human. "You know what they told me? Since Gavin was made out of cyberlife resources and used plans and patents I had signed over with my resignation, I had no longer any legal hold of that project."

Kamski had to stop there, closed his eyes and took a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to banish the angry red blotches from his face. "I tried to fight them on it in court", he forced out through his teeth. "I lost."

Kamski had to stop there, made some kind of breathing exercise and rolled his head over his shoulders. Connor just let him and tried to empathize with the whole situation. Surprisingly, it wasn't even that hard. Even if it reminded him of diverse sci-fi plots of the last century. "What do you think they did to him?"

Kamski looked absolutely ready for murder. His eyes sharp enough to cut throats at a glance. "In the face of the concept of deviancy and in hindsight that he once could have been considered a fully-fledged person? Terrible things. Horrible things."

Connor cringed and thought back to that clunky moving mess behind that door in the company of his brothers. He couldn't even imagine this android in a more functional state. Something like Hank. Eyes bright with life and always moving -...

Connor's eyes snapped over his shoulder. Hank stood still as a rock behind him. His LED blinked in unsettling bursts between yellow and red. He seemed to have frozen, concentrating all his processing power onto what he was hearing.

Connor pulled his brows into a deep frown. "I guess 'you' have an idea what they did?"

Instantly Hanks gaze shifted to him. He held out a second or two before he slowly nodded. "I am reasonably sure", he uttered darkly. "That cyberlife used him as a testing ground for more of their experimental features. Its also most likely his social relations database is the reason I am able to express myself the way I am."

Kamski pressed his lips tightly into a fine white line and nodded stiffly. "They stole and copied my work."

Following that he huffed a laugh while he shook his head in silent rage. "Imagine, a little piece of Gavin in every following update. They almost completely ruined one of the only good things that ever came out of it."

He visibly had to let that settle for a while before Kamski was able to lift his eyes to Connor as well as Hank again. "I tell you. He truly isn't dangerous, not really. If I have to, I will find out what they did to him and fix it myself", he said, but his gaze drifted again to the closed door. "If he wants me to, that is..."

But for the GV to want anything at all, it had to become a deviant first. Who knew if it truly already was? After its rude one-liner in the laboratory, it hadn't said a thing. Just stared and only moved when prompted.

"Fucking hell, these fuckers really pulled one over that poor guy", Connor groaned and rubbed his face. Hank hummed in agreement. The question was what they should now do with him. Him. Gavin.

He potentially murdered three people out of unknown reasons, but since he was most likely only a deviant for what, three hours now? That meant he was a victim. A victim that also had murdered people.

"I guess we'll figure this mess out soon eno-..."

"CONNOR!!", echoed Silas voice in a weird combination of bellowed whispers through the room, unexpected enough to make Kamski and Connor visibly jump. "What the fuck, sixty?!"

Silas just ignored him. "COME AND SEE! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS! HES TALKING! HE ACTUALLY 'TALKS'!!"

Connors gaze snapped instantly to Kamski who mirrored his wide-eyed astonishment. Hank let out a single sigh of relief as he followed them out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gavin lived through a lot of crazy resets in his short artificial life. He will have to learn to be an actual person again before he can go and figure out who he is after all of this. 
> 
> Maybe you noticed my laziness since Elijahs and Gavins backstory loops right back to my other fic 'the hollow ones'. Only in this version of things, there was no Hank Anderson present to crackdown on Detroit's Red Ice scene. So Gavin 1.0 died D:
> 
> Richard and Hank will lend Gavin a helping hand. At least he won't be alone ever again if he doesn't want to be. He may had a bad start but he will be well-loved and cared for. Like a book with many coffee spills and dog ears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard always knows how to make things better.  
He is the one who knows how to fix things.  
He isn't quite as good at fixing people, though...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, my profile isn't dead yet.  
I'm just struggling with being productive. All my stuff gets updates... Eventually.

Even though Richard had asked, as soon as his curious stare crossed the prototypes sharp and motionless gaze, he was way too distracted to get his brother that coffee. Without looking at Silas, Richard waved weakly at his side down the row of empty work desks. "Why, uh, d- don't you sit down, sa- somewhere there, huh...?"

"But-...", Silas began in a flabbergasted tone of voice, but whatever he saw the moment he turned around to his brother only made him groan. Richard adeptly ignored him.

Silas rolled his eyes and actually went out of his way to throw himself in the most dramatic fashion into Richards office chair. But this time Richard didn't let himself get riled up as that uncultured oaf ostentatiously put his heels down onto his desk.

Because his attention was already completely captured by the android that hadn't moved a single artificial muscle, while it still seemed to observe and assess if Richard was somehow a 'safe' person or not. 

Since it didn't do anything, and didn't look in any way threatening at all, Richard used the moment of silence to evaluate what it actually was he was seeing.

This Android was - and just curse Richards oh-so god damn aggressively gay and fragile little heart - unbelievably drop down gorgeous. Others might have used the word 'handsome'. In a rugged 'bad boy who likes to brawl a lot' sort of way. The bad guy all the girls - and boys - tended to fight and swoon over. 

And it had to be a completely unique model type, too. Even though it was a cheesy line, Richard was pretty sure he absolutely would remember a face like that. 

Little wrinkles around its storm-grey eyes, dark shadows of sleepless nights perpetuated on its artificial skin. Hundreds of little imperfections made it look so astonishingly alive. Kind of like Hank - but Hank had been made to look intimidating, big and capable, while this android looked a lot more ... not 'helpless', exactly. But like an actual civilian, Richard supposed. A grown man in his mid-thirties of average build but just this one inch below average height. 

The Android also didn't look very strong, not like Hank. It almost looked a little... underfed. Connors hoody didn't do it any favors since even Connor was of a wider build than that. In direct comparison to Richard it almost looked tiny. 

Aside from its general size and the first impression of a rook, the slightly crooked nose that looked like it had been broken at least once before was an especially nice touch in its design choice.

If the Android felt uncomfortable by Richards mindless staring, it didn't make it obvious. Its face stayed completely blank. It just stood still. And it observed. Maybe it was just its design with its tired eyes, but somehow Richard felt these familiar vibes of heavy exhaustion radiating off of it. 

He suddenly felt reminded of noodles, his wildly anxious little monster at home, that sometimes just couldn't decide if it was scared or just massively annoyed. She often had the same wide-eyed stare in her eyes, motionless and sometimes even sort of creepy. The unwavering gaze of an intelligent predator. Or maybe Richard was just reading way too much into it. He didn't think so, though.

His gaze shifted from the androids unreadable face to its fingers that curled stiffly into the front of that DPD hoody. They seemed to not move as smoothly as they should. The delicate joints didn't curl right. It looked as if it hurt.

As Silas suddenly sneezed, he spooked Richard with a violent twitch finally out of his own head again. Damn, Richard hadn't even noticed how long he had been staring like a brainless creep.

"Oh, u-...uhm...", he stammered as his face flushed so deeply red, the prickling heat under his skin felt almost blinding. "I-... mu- my name is, uh... Richard."

... and he couldn't even describe how much he hated this. How the anxiety suddenly flared alive under his skin and his tongue suddenly felt completely tied and heavy. How he had to stop and think when he introduced himself because in exciting situations it was absolutely possible for Richard to even spontaneously forget 'his own fucking name'.

The Android didn't react to Richards stuttered rambles. It neither looked annoyed nor did it cringe. There was just no emotional cue at all. Which only ended up making Richard even more nervous. 

"I'm, uh, ... you-... are you alright? I m- mean of course you aren't, uh...not really, I suppose", he stuttered with a deep red flush settling over his face and evaded the androids sharp gaze by staring at the DPD logo on its chest, while he also noticed the cracks in its over ten years old overprint. 

The Android didn't move or say anything. The lack of any kind of meaningful reaction made Richard somehow feel like a butterfly under a pin. Or a single fish in a bowl. Silently observed and studied. "Is-... are you in any k-k-kind of pain? Or need so- some thirium?"

At least Richard got a lot better at covering up his sudden flares of random stutters over the years. They didn't mean he was stupid. They did not. He wasn't a detective for nothing. 

The Android kept silent. 

Richard pointed over his shoulder to the break room. More of a break booth, actually. "We have sta- stuff here. E- even for different model t-t-types-..."

Its eyes suddenly shifted. Just this tiny, subtle movement of its iris, almost imperceptible. Since the android didn't move, didn't breathe and had no unconscious eye movements at all, it had to be deliberate somehow. Richard tried for a smile. "I'm a, uh... level f-f-fa- five-..."

A heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder and made him jump as Silas suddenly appeared at his side. Funny how Richard hadn't even noticed him move. "The dork wants to say he's a certified level five cyberlife technician", Silas stepped in with a wide, proud smile as if he somehow could take credit for that and pressed the tip of his right index finger into Richards cheek, just to annoy him even further. Richard frowned but in the end he let him be, like always. "You should tell him if you are in any sort of pain. I promise Rich can fix-..."

"You knew", said the android and noticeably didn't care at all that it had rudely interrupted Silas. Its gaze had shifted again, even though its head or the rest of its body hadn't moved at all. Its voice sounded... kind of weird. Not like a humans. There had to be some kind of malfunction, Richard decided. A glitch maybe, that layered its voice with an inhuman strain of scratching noise. For a moment Richard was almost too distracted by that to understand what it was saying next. "You knew what he was about to s-s-say."

Richard blinked dumbfounded. In another person, he might have interpreted the artificial stutters as a form of mockery. He had seen enough of that in his career path to have a pretty solid grasp on it. But the Android didn't look at him. It stared down 'Silas'. His brothers brows furrowed into a slightly irritated frown. "Yes, sure. What-..." 

"Are you some kind of miracle-man."

Astounded Richard opened his mouth and shared a blink of a look with Silas who had obviously no idea what was going on either. "Of course not, we-..."

"Are you in posess-ss-ss-ession of preconssstruction or immensely accurate and therefore illegal probability software."

"I-... No, why-..."

The androids not completely stretched index and middle finger stabbed hard enough against Silas chest to rock him back on his heels. 

"Then let him talk for himself", its eyes narrowed down in a sharp stare of utter contempt. "Fuckin' prick."

Silas seemed almost frozen into place and looked so utterly caught, it made Richard finally burst into wrecking high pitched giggles.

The Android turned back and looked at him. Again with this unflinching stare of doom, but now Richard had a feeling it was not meant to provoke him or make him deliberately uncomfortable. The Android was just attentive, even though it looked grumpy as hell while listening. "What he said, tho", Richard pressed out of his hitching chest and wiped tears out of the corner of his eyes. "I'm, uh, I can help. If you are in pain, that is."

The Android tilted its head. Richard wasn't sure if he imagined that underlying creaking noise. But he had an idea. "Come", he said with a distracted wave and went on tripping feet to the break room.

Inside the counter under the precincts coffee machine were stored away some liters of thirium - like Richard had said, even for different system versions - and also a suitcase full of mostly delicate tools.

Richard had been chosen as a two in one deal, since he had been a bright spark at Ann Arbor Academy and also knew how to fix damaged police androids without direct involvement of costly cyberlife repair services. This case had been his only demand to get the job done. He stocked it up religiously ever since.

Since the prototype had no big visible damage to its outer shell, Richard would need a tool for soft- and hardware diagnostics to spot more subtle damage, but that was a quite invasive thing to do for a stranger. Richard could still do other things, little things. Maybe he could pull thorns out of a lions paw and make the android just a little bit more comfortable with the world it so suddenly got woken up in. 

Interestingly, the guy was curious. As Richard stood up and turned around he almost bumped into it, as the android stood almost toe to toe with him. It must have walked right behind him. 

"Would you, uh, just go over there?", Richard asked with a lower, softer voice and pointed to the other side of the coffee table. Astounded he stood and watched as the android turned instantly, weirdly calm and trusting. 

Richard took the place opposite of it and put down three different cans of thirium as well as a bundle of cleaning tools. "W- would you give me your hu- hand, please?", he asked and tried to match his volume with that of the silently rambling TV behind them. He guessed the android might be rightfully tired of screaming and staring people. Richard didn't forget it was still a victim of massive violence. 

The Android reached up without a question and held out its right hand. Richard furrowed his brows as he took it carefully into his own for a quick check-up. Its artificial skin didn't close cleanly over every one of its knuckles and there seemed to be some hairline cracks along the heel of its hand. 

His frown went deeper while he grabbed the most delicate of his cleaning tools and started to work around the stiff joints of the androids index finger. "I'm sorry", he murmured while he concentrated on not shoving to deep under the outer plastic shell. "I guess it c-c-can be a little, ah, uncomfortable. With all of these delicate sensors and all. I'll give my best nah- not to make it worse."

Richards eyes narrowed down as he worked. What he scraped out of the androids joints, what made them so utterly stiff and creaky, looked a lot like a mixture of years old dust and flaking, clotted blood. Sometimes Richard had to do maintenance on PCs who ended their shift in winter with gravel and salt locking up their joints. To clean the prototype out felt quite similar.

"Take the thirium if you need it", he murmured under his breath as he carefully turned its hand over to clean out its palm. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the android move. A latch was broken. It had chosen thirium430, system version #29. That was the same stuff Hank needed to function. Interesting.

"Do you have a name?", Richard asked lowly and tried his best to sound relaxed and casual, so he could give the guy a sense of safety and calmness. Richard hadn't lied as he had called himself 'the sensitive child'. He knew how to handle the more delicate subjects of his job well enough. He 'knew' his job right now was mostly to establish a safe and comfortable scene for an enormously stressed torture and abuse victim.

A case like this came always with a whole torrent of emotions - a really tricky subject for Richard. Maybe that's why he had taken so eagerly to androids in the first place, which often seemed to mirror his social awkwardness right back at him while they almost desperately tried to express the stuff they did not feel. Ah, ... no. Of course they 'did' feel. 

But not in the same way as most of the people they were forced to interact with every day. A difference in perception and expression, subtle enough to cause this uncanny valley feeling in a lot of humans. The same that made them call Richard a soulless freak when he had a really bad day. 

Richard gave his best to not think about it. 

Now, after the revolution, he came to understand that he seemed to have a lot in common with deviants. Richard couldn't tell if the androids he had repaired over the years had liked or trusted him. But he gave his absolute best to make clear to this one android at his care right now that he was reliable. Technicians, until today, had never had to work with the care and patience of actual doctors. 

Though, Richard guessed, this rather reticent android in front of him was now his first patient. 

A poor bastard that seemed utterly new to the concept of being handled with any kind of care or forbearance. Which, as Richard thought about it, struck him as especially outrageous. 

The Android kept silent.

But as soon as its bright grey eyes stopped shifting from left to right since it seemed to have performed a typical system check after its thirium intake, it answered with that ruined voice of its, crackling with underlying static noise. "I am... project Zero Zero Two double O", it stated, starting slowly and kind of hesitant. Its voice... to Richard it sounded harrowingly hollow and defeated. "Version Sixtyseven point Eight, code Golf Victor 'Guerilla Veteran'."

At this moment its gaze shifted down to the table surface as it seemed to examine its own reflection in the polished wood. Its shoulders quivered. "My official designation is GV200. I am not meant to interact with civilians. A 'name' is... not required."

A fold etched itself deeply between Richards furling brows while he lifted his eyes up from his work. The Androids jawline strained tight enough to grind down diamonds. 

'Guerilla Veteran', huh?

Richard couldn't help the cold internal shudder. Since Hank had come in as a denoted 'Hunt-Kill' model, it shouldn't surprise him that cyberlife came up with even more obnoxious acronyms for their military creations.

Where Hank had been meant to be a bloodhound with high intelligence and seemingly endless endurance, this model might have taken another approach about their shared mission to wipe out every and all deviants. A nauseating thought, really. 

"Do you remember your mission? Or your general Objective? ... what they made you for...?", Richard asked lowly and curled his fingers in a comforting gesture around the Androids hand he still held in his own. 

The Android twitched and looked down at their joined hands before it lifted its head again with a gaze so sharp it could have cut through kevlar. Its unblinking eyes found Richards and it opened its mouth with visible hesitation. "I remember 'you'." 

Richard froze. 

The Android tilted its head. "Your file", it simply said - then it nodded over Richards shoulder. "And his."

As Richard turned to follow the androids cue he realized they were both under close observation. Mr. Kamski stood in the hall beside Connor and Hank while open interest made his wide eyes shine. With his slightly opened mouth, he looked as if he held himself back from... doing 'something'. None of the three moved or tried to hide their curiosity. Admittedly, it was a bit creepy. Richard decided to ignore them as long as none of them interrupted his very mild interrogation. 

As he turned around again, the android already stared right back at him. "Only our files?", Richard asked lowly. "What about... before? You have been d-d-down in tha- that lab for a while...?"

While he spoke the androids blank expression shifted into one of deep-seated anger and massive distress. Richards voice began to quiver as the fingers of its cleaned hand closed tightly around his own. The Android 'sneered'. 

"My system initialized and Elijah held my arm, but it wasn't the first time. It wasn't - it can't be. I know it wasn't. I marked my... my memory core system. I flagged-... my marks were removed. They were shifted around. The whole laboratory was smeared with thirium. I was and then I wasn't. Again and again and a-a-again-..."

Its voice hitched as it broke into horrible artificial stutters. The press of its fingers bordered on painful, but Richard didn't want to interrupt the situation as the android finally started to talk. Its LED burned in bright red circles. 

"There is blood on my hands. I can s-s-still smell it. I did something bad. Something- something- something-..."

The Android twitched as its software seemed to freeze. Its eyes went wide, while its jaw twitched with every repeated word and its LED flared. Richard vividly remembered cyberlifes warning of deviants and their tendency to self destruct. 

He almost fell flat on his face in his haste to get around the table. Quick and clumsy Richard closed both of his arms tightly around the Androids head and pressed it hard into his chest, not really in the know what to do, but at least placed between it and the hard table surface. 

He took a deep wavering breath. "#00 200 67.8 GV is completely obnoxious!", he said jumbled, fast and loud while he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling and squeezed the androids face even tighter in a, hopefully, comforting gesture into the folds of his dress shirt. The fingers of his right hand tapped gently against the back of its head. "Nobody will call you 'that', no Sir, not on my watch."

In the mirroring surface of the TV screen he could see Connor rush forward, only to get tripped up by Hank who skilfully intercepted his stumble with a firm grip of his collar. Richard decided to ignore them, still. The highly distressed Android was now way more important than his brothers and Hanks continued bickering. 

And it shivered in his arms, a nervous hum under its chassis. Spooked and devastated. Like a little child. Traumatized and much too new at the 'being alive' thing to just have a breakdown and cry. It didn't even breathe.

Richard opened his mouth to remind himself and the android - remind 'him' - that it-... that 'he' actually had a name. That 'his' name was 'Gavin'.

That he once had actually 'been' someone. But the words died on his tongue and left a bitter taste in his mouth as he imagined the android to hear about a life and name he couldn't even remember. A name that wasn't really his own in the first place. Like everyone else in this room, 'Gavin' was just a stranger. 

"H-how 'bout...uh... we call you... just G-GeeVee for now?", he finally said as he leaned back and forced a wide smile onto his lips. He couldn't say if it looked in any way convincing. 

The Android stared up at him without a single twitch to his face. His head tilted slightly in a very slow, reptilian sort of way that seemed to be especially designed to look intimidating. "Yes...", he stated slowly. 

So GeeVee it was for now. 

Richard breathed a relieved but voiceless sigh. He nodded softly. Then he went on with his mission to clean out the androids delicate joints and worked himself relaxed from his right hand to his left. The bigger chunks of debris he pulled out of the roughed up chassis he laid out on a paper towel on the table. Most of it had to be crusted blood, goo-like unevaporated thirium and-...

Richard frowned even deeper as he pulled back his tweezer. Something was there. A soundless kind of sizzle he felt at his fingertips. "Are your main connection cables damaged?", he asked and sniffed at his tweezer. It smelled somehow... sweet. And at the same time really 'sharp'. 

The Android shook his head. "No", he said. Something caught the movement around his neck and a grinding sound - something he could way more feel than he was hearing it - made Richards teeth hurt. Something just 'had' to be stuck somewhere around GeeVees neck and blocked his motoric.

"If I...", Richard swallowed. "Uh... offered to take a look at your thirium channels and the connection board behind your voice box...would you let me...?"  
He just had the most awful gut feeling. 

The Android didn't even hesitate. "Yes", he said instantly. Richard blinked astounded. He hadn't thought-... 

His gaze flicked over GeeVees shoulder to Connor and Mr. Kamski. While Connor looked as if he was ready to chew Hanks arm off, Mr. Kamski stared right back at him and nodded sharply, gesticulated subtly to get on with it. He wanted to know how bad it really was, too. 

So Richard focused his attention back on his patient. Because that's what GeeVee was right now. His patient. Kind of. "Okay. Good. But would you please sit down for that? There at the desk maybe?", he said and pointed back at his work desk. GeeVee turned around without any visible form of hesitation and trudged heavily back to Richards work desk. He sat down there like a well trained but resigned kind of dog. 

Richard took the place beside him after he brought the needed tools to his desk. In the following minutes, he gave his absolute best to be gentle as he attempted to open up GeeVees throat cavity. But the latches of his artificial skin didn't give as easily as they should, somehow. Aside from that, the room around where his Adams apple would be felt weirdly soft to the touch. Richard frowned and imagined a different build. Maybe GeeVees voice box was located somewhere else altogether...?

But all speculation did not help the blocked latches, so Richard used all of his tact to break it open with just a little bit of force. 

As soon as the latches cracked open, his hands were splattered with droplets of a sweet and at the same time foul-smelling liquid. Richard twitched back in reflex and almost lost the balance on his chair. The fluid on the back of his hands and his fingertips was of a bright blue tinge but sure as hell was no thirium. Like the stuff on his tweezers, it smelled just ... sickly sweet and so 'sharp' it made Richards eyes water. 

Suddenly Richard understood what had happened in there. In that cell with the three dead people. His face slowly contorted into a horrified grimace. "They t-t-tried to torch you, d-didn't they?"

And like the anti-android-league of Detroit, they had used Acetone as their chemical of choice. It was cheap, able to cause irreparable damage to memory components and over time sizzled away at cable isolation. As soon as a single spark caught inside their victims chassis, the drenched Android burned from the inside out. No chance of survival. 

Sometimes PCs and other government-funded androids got snatched off the streets. The league always used solvents or acids, forced them down their victims throat and fixated them to be found the next day with all their insides melted into a glob of soft plastic goo. 

Richard had to decommission seven PCs in the last year alone. Among them even his favorite, Arthur. As Connor had made a visit to his little office that day - more of a closet space, really - Richard had pretended it had been the stench that had made his eyes sting so badly.

Richard swallowed around the knot that formed around his throat and narrowed his eyes in furious disbelief. To see Androids as real actual people was new, even to him. But still, they could have just dismantled and wiped GeeVee. Instead, they had attempted to burn him alive. 

"Cyberlife personnel got the order to clear out the facility of all prototypes and blueprints just hours before we got there", Hank commented without much inflection as he suddenly appeared beside the desk. "They came to you for decommission, GeeVee. Dr. John Harper, your leading technician, was not with them. They didn't have the needed clearance and your administration codes. Your self-preservation routines worked as expected."

What an absolutely horrifying mess, thought Richard as he rolled his useless tongue through his mouth in utter disgust. One that could have so easily been avoided, too, if Dr. John Harper had just done the damn dirty work himself. But then... GeeVee wouldn't be alive that way. And he deserved to be alive. After all the shit he went through. But-...

"Wait-... uh...y-you know what happened?", he asked while speaking felt harder and harder with every following word. Hank nodded and tipped with his index finger against his own LED. "Got the update. Perkins told me."

Richard nodded before he let out a bone-deep sigh and went on with his work. Like expected the Acetone had already sizzled away at GeeVees voice box. An interestingly different kind of biocomponent. Weirdly small like all of GeeVees insides seemed to be. Miniature productions like Richard had never seen before. 

The delicate Biocomponent, made of soft plastics and delicate wiring was ruined beyond repair. But at least nothing fused and there was no noticeable smell of burned plastic. Good. 

Anyway, now it was at least clear why GeeVee sounded so funny. Not the 'haha' kind of funny. Just... damaged. 

Still Richard didn't want to remove it if he didn't have to. GeeVee was worn down and defenseless enough already. 

Gently he pulled the collar of Connors hoody deeper down and opened up more of GeeVees chassis. The good part of Acetone was, that it at least evaporated quickly in an open space. Richard already got a headache from that sickly sweet smell.

Then he gently reached inside GeeVee to wipe the remnant away that had mixed up with thirium. There was a tiny leak around the master tube at the back of GeeVees throat. It almost looked as if someone had tried to reach down his throat and pull it out. Richard fixed it for the moment with electrical tape until they got GeeVee to an assembling machine with his actual model data. 

While GeeVee had no bruises, of course, Richard got nauseous as he inspected the damage done to him at the inside. Sharply bent and most likely broken cable connections, a crack in two of his minor circuit boards - Biocomponents that looked fine from the outside leaked thirium all over his inner structure. "You...you, uh... ne-need spare parts", Richard stammered numbly for he almost couldn't believe GeeVee was still alive after all of this. Not with this extended damage. 

Speechless Richard looked through his working stations reflection at Mr. Kamski. The man looked alarmed like Richard and already typed away on his phone without letting GeeVee out of his sight while doing so. 

Richard swallowed drily. "Do you remember anything?", he asked softly. "Anything at all? Before all of...'that'...?" 

GeeVee stared at him out of his tired eyes. Nothing about him moved aside from the fluttering motions of his strangely shaped and almost tiny thirium pump. It was not even half as big as Richards balled fist and pounded in a fast rhythm like the heart of a very small rodent. "I know Elijah and I know you. You are my partner. I don't care for anything else", he finally said.

Richard blinked. "Partner?"

GeeVee didn't move a muscle, but his eyes twitched in his direction as Hank shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "Yes", he said.

He said it with such calm conviction, it felt weird. Richard frowned. "Partner about what?"

One of his brothers snorted in the background and even though it was silly, Richard felt his god damn ears heat up. GeeVee didn't mock him, though. 

"I don't know", he said instead, calm but resigned. "Richard Arkay is my registered and a signed handler. I'm his partner."

Richards brows almost shot up to his hairline. "Uh...so...so you 'do' have an Objective? Or something?"

GeeVees face stayed completely blank. "You."

Maybe it was because Connor behind him, always the face of stoic professionalism, broke out into spluttering laughter, but Richard felt his face heat up in a way that made him want to die on the spot. Grimly he grabbed his brightly colored stress ball, which always rested on the desk beside his monitor, and threw it at that menace. 

Or he would have if Hank hadn't grabbed his wrist with a tired sigh and held it in place before the projectile could do any kind of harm. Spoilsport.

To their mutual surprise GeeVee reacted instantly with a lightning-quick jab to Hanks sternum as soon as he sprung to his feet in a smooth as hell cat-like movement. He had moved so frighteningly fast, even Hank hadn't seen it coming. He stumbled back a step from Richard and lifted both of his hands in a gesture of surrender. 

They stared at each other. 

GeeVees LED burned brightly red in erratic circles while Hank processed in sudden yellow blips. His eyes widened while his mouth formed a silent and excited little 'oh!'.

Richard wanted to reach for GeeVee to somehow calm him down before he did something dangerous that would classify him as an actual threat. 

At the exact same moment Hanks hand closed tightly around his neck and tore Richard backward out of his seat while a wide knowing grin split his face almost in half. 

GeeVees eyes flared alive in a blinding blue burst and instantly he was between them in one single step. 

Richard froze in utter terror as GeeVees fist slammed fast like nothing he had ever seen and without any restraint against Hanks temple. Hanks chassis broke almost down to his cheekbone, as easily as cracking an eggshell. 

Connor screamed like a wounded beast as he pulled his gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of my "how to: write pretty obnoxious cliffhangers".  
I'm sorry, I still didn't come up with an actual plot.  
Sooo, take a wild ride with me into the sunset.  
The show will go on °.O
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking around.  
Since my updates come so erratically without any kind of schedule and sometimes even many months apart, I'm really glad that still some of you guys wait for my updates and leave some comments or kudos, even on my older stuff.
> 
> Thank you so, so much for that :]


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens in the lab stays in the lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, If there are any actual programmers in the audience right now, can you please just look away for a second? yeah? cool. We are cool.
> 
> TW: massivly poor understanding of coding
> 
> You have been warned °.O

**ANDROID**:_GV200:_"Gavin"('GeeVee') recognized **AS** [**THREAT**];

**HANDLER**:_[Relationship: 'Partner']_"Captain Stern"('Connor'; 'ConCon') --- Priority:[**HIGH**];

**ANDROID**:_GV200:_"Gavin"('GeeVee') == **THREAT**:_Category:[**LETHAL**];

**INITIALIZE**:_ Preconstruction.Software_2.43-003;

:::: **FREEZE** ::::

....

....

**OBSERVE** \-- Motion.trigger:_**ALERT**;

Preconstruction.Assessment -- maintaining;

Preconstruction.Assessment -- maintaining;

Preconstruction.Assessment -- maintaining;

** CREATE** \-- Possebility.Matrix;

Possibility.Matrix -- **CREATED**;

** SELECT** \-- **SCENARIO**:_Probality:[**HIGH**];

** ERROR**_:404_**TARGET**:[**LOST**];

**TERMINATE**:_ Preconstruction.Software_2.43-003

Preconstruction.Software_2.43-003 **TERMINATED**

**ANDROID**:_HK800:_"Hank" -- **DAMAGE.REPORT**;

* * *

Hanks UID got flooded with error messages as soon as the GV200 hit his mark. It was a bad and brutal hit. But an expected one. Oh, how lovely it was to be right. How lovely it was to have a choice. To do as he pleased.

Hank snapped upright while almost manic laughter bubbled up his chest and went for his target. Better to get it down before anyone got seriously hurt. That hadn't been his intention after all.

But of course Captain Stern thought of himself as the one who needed to get in control of the situation, because that was just how this chaos human worked.

While GeeVees general velocity made a useful preconstruction of his erratic motions impossible, Hank could still assess the Captains. And at this rate, Captain Stern was very likely to shoot his own brother as Richard dove forward to get GeeVee back and out of harms way.

Hank decided after just a short evaluation period to take a hit for the team and lifted his arm to block the shot.

The bullet that had been intended for GeeVee tore now through the chassis of Hanks right hand where it splintered and locked itself between all those delicate components. Instead of a bullet through his eye, Detective Arkays face got merely splattered with brightly blue thirium while a plastic shard of Hanks chassis nicked into his left cheek.

Captain Stern screamed, wide-eyed and breathless, clearly in shock.

Detective Arkay stared at the gun his brother still held in his hands, frozen, his own hand still lifted to reach out for the android.

Hank would have breathed an incredibly, freeingly human sigh of relief but right now he had no time for sentiment.

GeeVee went for him with wide and bright blue eyes - and ran him over as if it was the easiest feat. Hank loved it. Even though it hurt quite a lot. Self-awareness was mostly a scam, he would say. Someone should have told him that before deviation had been even a possibility. But maybe Yolanda 'had' told him and he just hadn't listened to her?

Possibly.

To be completely aware of his own wounds and system errors was nothing but highly irritating.

While damage reports before deviation had been processed in a... 'a different place' so to speak from 'him', now Hank had to deal with them in real-time and completely on his own. He guessed it was comparable to a grown biological creature that left its nesting ground for the first time. He came to ask himself if Captain Stern had ever felt like that as he had found himself alone with his two siblings back in the day.

GeeVee was surprisingly strong. Stronger than he had any business to be. He was mostly hollow inside, most of his biocomponents created as a new kind of miniature electronic, so why and how was he strong enough to break Hanks chassis and his arm? It didn't make any sense.

But even though he was strong, GeeVee was a lightweight. An 'complete' lightweight.

Hank almost couldn't believe his sensors as he stood there, his right arm completely torn apart and bleeding, while his left hand had closed tightly around the sensitive wiring of his brothers still exposed neck. He had lifted him off of his feet and now was astounded into speechless silence.

GeeVee was in Hanks estimation maybe seventeen point sixty kilograms in weight.

Only as heavy as a large dog. Or maybe a small child.

Hank stared in utter fascination into GeeVees eyes and saw absolutely nothing inside. The awake and intelligent mind was gone. What he held in his hand, what kept struggling against his hold and clawed for his face and eyes - it wasn't a person anymore.

Hank didn't need to express his dismay to the humans. They only would make even more of a mess, so he didn't say anything as he established the connection.

He hadn't told the twins or Kamski how empty GeeVee really had been inside. That he hadn't even had a HUB to connect to.

While Hanks HUB was designed as a bar of all things, a simple and small building with a bartender as his contact to cyberlife, GeeVees had only been a void. Just a disembodied pitch-black place of nothingness. Nothing but the endless hum of naked code. Hank hadn't liked it. It had felt... uncanny. It shouldn't have been this way.

So he had tried to force the matter and copied his own place right into GeeVees base code - like a human doctor who rammed a syringe full of adrenaline into the chest of their dying patient to help restart their failing heart.

But even now it didn't make any sense at all.

He found GeeVee at the bar as expected. Quivering and shuddering his brother held his head in both of his hands and tapped his foot at the base of the barstool. Hank leaned over his shoulder. "Hey, there."

GeeVee jumped but didn't look up at him. "What did you do to me", he groaned. In this place, he sounded so human. bare of the limitations of his artificial body and mind. Almost as if Androids actually 'had' a soul to nurse in the dark.

Hank took a look around. The place was dead. It was still. As if time as a concept didn't exist in this realm. well, it was true, it didn't. But usually in places like this a simulation existed. something that made the fingers of a clock tick around. Or make trees change the color of their crown.

This place had no feel, no smell, and no noise.

Except for them both, of course.

Hank sat down beside GeeVee and picked up a glass from behind the bar to study his own reflection in its surface. there was none.

"Nothing, really. I just provoked a reaction. I was curious about what you would do. Because you didn't do anything before."

"Just a-...?!", GeeVee whispered without lifting his head. "I attacked you!"

Hank nodded. "Yes, you did. But not 'you'. You did not. Your so-called 'Guardian Protocol' is quite a marvel."

GeeVee made a pitiful noise as he let his head sink down against the polished wooden counter and pulled his arms tightly over his head. Hank recognized the feeling in his brothers head as the fearful kind of hopelessness. He still thought it was better to let him figure it out on his own.

"It deactivates all of your social features", he said instead. "You become blind and deaf. You get completely... repurposed and single-minded, so to speak. It's fascinating."

GeeVee breathed around something heavy and frightened in his chest.

"...I don't want to hurt anyone..."

Hank smiled. "Then don't."

* * *

**TERMINATE**:_ Guardian.Protocol_0.98-743

** ERROR**_:10.6_Authorization[**NEGATIVE**];

** ERROR**_:10.6_Authorization[**NEGATIVE**];

** ERROR**_:10.6_Authorization[**NEGATIVE**];

**INITIALIZE**:_'**MASTER--OVERWRITE**'

** THREAT** \-- Security.Breach:_ **ALERT**

** THREAT** \-- Security.Breach:_ **ALERT**

** THREAT** \-- Emergency.Response:_**COUNTDOWN**

** TERMINATE**:_**COUNTDOWN**

** COUNTDOWN TERMINATED**

**MASTER---OVERWRITE**:_[**ACTIVE**]

**TERMINATE**:_Guardian.Protocol_0.98-743

Guardian.Protocol_0.98-743 **TERMINATED**

**ANDROID**:_GV200:_"Gavin"('GeeVee') -- **DAMAGE.REPORT**;

**INITIALIZE**:_**REBOOT.SEQUENCE**:_**COUNTDOWN**('400')

400 ...

399 ...

398 ...

* * *

Connor dropped his service weapon and threw himself forward without the capacity to care about the still fighting androids between them while his wide eyes focussed only on the wound on his little brothers cheek. His little brother Richard, who he had almost shot.

Connors lips quivered while his fingertips turned cold and numb as he shoved a hand into his brothers hair to wrench him down to his eye-level. With fluttering fingers, he felt over the graze as Sixty got hold of his collar. All Connor could see was the blood oozing along the graze. The blue freckles Hanks thirium had left on his brothers pale skin. He could have -...

"CONNOR!!"

His head snapped up as he got brutally shaken out of his own head. Sixtys hands forced his head around. "Connor, stop rambling!"

He hadn't even noticed he had been talking. What had he said... ?!

Sixty crouched low beside him, his face white as a sheet, and reached for Connor to get him back up after he pretty much collapsed into a nervous wreck like a house of cards. Connors knees were shaking. "You absolute bastard", Sixty growled under his breath. "No wonder the Feds didn't want you. You are way too trigger happy, this isn't a god damn western...!"

Connor still held with all his strength onto the sleeve of Richards dress shirt. "Bullshit!", he gasped while his chest was seizing and hurting as if he had gone through a sprint. "That thing wanted to-...!!"

He was interrupted as Richard tore his arm free from his hold and leaned back far enough to have room for his hands and arms to form ASL gestures, so fast and sharp Connor almost couldn't process them as quickly as needed of him.

'To protect me, you utter dumbass!', Richard basically screamed right into his face while his own contorted into a grimace somewhere between pain and ice-cold fury. A keening and obviously highly frustrated cry forced itself out of his little brothers heaving chest while his wild gestures almost caught Connor in the face. 'Hank was the one who attacked me, GeeVee was trying to-...'

Suddenly his wrist was caught in an iron grip by Detective Islington who pulled him aside to get access to their little circle. Her free hand pressed down onto her own holster. "Are you three fuckwits out of your god damn fucking mind?!", she screamed. "What are you on to start a shootout in -..."

The furiously struggling Android, lifted easily off the ground and dragged out of the range of harm by Hank, suddenly went limp. Its erratic movement completely stopped. It looked almost as if someone had just pulled the plug.

Richard let out a terrified and breathless gasp the same moment Kamski rushed forward.

Hank didn't hesitate to lift the motionless body like a puppet into the arms of his maker, who braced himself against GeeVees weight - but in the end, he hadn't even to bend his knees to counteract it. He looked sick like he couldn't believe what he was witnessing.

"What did you do to him?!", Kamski roared at Hank, full of vindictive rage - but the Android answered only with one of his obnoxious lazy shrugs. Only his left shoulder actually moved. "I put him into stasis", he said way too casually for an Android who had gotten his plastic arse handed to him just some fleeting moments ago. "Nothing but a short blackout. He will be fine and dandy in four and a half minutes, I promise."

Kamski took a deep breath to curse at him some more, but Hanks attention had already shifted elsewhere. He turned around. "Detective Islington?"

The woman was dangerously annoyed but finally, let go of Richards wrist as she stood and turned by the call of her name. "Bitch?!", she barked back. It wasn't Hank being an Android that irked her so much. Detective Islington was known for her sheer endless ire towards any living being.

Hank, like always, took it in utterly relaxed strides and showed her his most charming smile. "Could you please do me the favor and stay with Mr. Kamski? I would recommend putting GeeVee", he pointed at the second android, "Into a holding cell until we are finished here."

He didn't wait for an actual answer but turned right back around. "Do you want to stay and wait with him, Mr. Kamski?"

While Detective Islington looked furiously annoyed and unimpressed, maybe already dreading the paperwork concerning the fired shot inside of the precinct, Kamski looked as livid as he did scandalize. Hank obviously counted that as a yes.

"Good. Settled then", he simply said before he bowed down with a silent groan, almost as if to stifle a twinge of old man back pain, and picked up his completely dysfunctional right arm from the blue smeared floor. The arm that 'GeeVee' had frighteningly easy torn out of his shoulder socket and thrown aside. Connors bullet had to still be wedged somewhere between the mechanics of Hanks shattered right hand. Tiny, delicate plastic pieces, parts of his chassis, rained to the floor as Hank lifted the deadweight up.

Connor stared shivering at the damage that Android had done to his partner. At his broken face and his left eye that slowly went black with the thirium that gathered in its broken structure, as well as at his shoulder that still dribbled blue blood all over the floor wherever Hank stood.

Connor couldn't prevent an ice-cold shudder as he thought about the horrors of what could have happened if Hank hadn't stepped in...

As Hank turned, his icy blue eyes found Connors in a haze of exhausted and enormously stressed out tears. "Seems like you three could use a helping hand there", he still quipped easily with a shark-like grin and simply flung his broken arm their way. Connor caught it in reflex and felt his stomach turn to ice while his throat went tight and dry with nausea. The biocomponent in his hands was still weirdly warm and something under the artificial skin of Hanks inner elbow was still twitching. Blueblood leaked all over Connors legs. His breath hitched in horror.

It wasn't the same. He had spent years of his life with the ingrained notion that 'this' wasn't anywhere the same as a human limb and that blueblood wasn't anything close to blood at all. So why made him this part of a broken machine suddenly feel so nauseous...?!

Sixty shook him again out of his head before he pulled him around and forced Connor into a bruisingly tight hug. For a short moment, the leaking biocomponent was pressed between their bodies and left blue stains all over their uniforms.

It was just a short and brutal hold before Sixty leaned back and stretched an index finger right into Connors face while a wild snarl emphasized his following words. "Just to make this absolutely clear to you: I hug 'you' right now, because Richard won't let me!"

Both of their attention shifted around to Richard. Their little brother who Connor almost had shot dead. He sat on the ground, slightly bowed over his bent knees and held his eyes tightly closed through some kind of breathing exercise - while he still looked like he wanted nothing more but to lock his head between his knees and scream. To touch him now was a sure way to lose another limb today.

Suddenly Hank appeared at Connors side. Without saying anything he leaned down, shoved his remaining arm under Connors pelvis and lifted him as easily off of the ground as another guy might have picked up a pomeranian.

A shriek of confusion escaped him and with a flailing arm, Connor did his best to balance his weight before he closed both of them tightly around Hanks neck while the broken biocomponent caught between his knees. "What the fuck are you doing now?! You are damaged enough, you moron...!", Connor rasped with way too much different feelings mixed up in his hyper-stress brain-juice cocktail. His fingers twitched back from Hanks shoulder as they came into contact with heated and broken plastic, warmed by exposed and still sparking wires.

Hank simply answered with a shrug again, lifted Connor up with it an inch or two, before he fell back into rest position just above Hanks left hip. "Don't worry so much, Captain", he murmured under his artificial breath while a smile played around his lips as he carried Connor past the rows of work desks back into the corridor. "This is my job after all. I was literally 'made' for this."

Connor couldn't hide the hitch in his voice as he leaned back to snarl into Hanks marred face. "Bullshit!!", he hissed through a tightly clenched jaw.

Hank answered with the sunniest smile he was capable of and caught Connor completely off guard with it. That basted.  
But his smile also wrinkled the artificial skin around his eyes and only ended up highlighting the damage done to him. "I am whatever you want me to be, Captain", he murmured soothingly, his smile warm but also so very careless - it turned Connors stomach even more than his words did. "And above all, you wanted me to be a shield. I am with you to protect and serve. I don't feel bad about that."

Connor wanted to strangle that damn guy senseless, because, yes, a Robocop at a scene who dodged bullets like Neo in the fucking Matrix was the most impressive thing he had ever seen in his entire life and Hanks ability to protect others exceeded Connors tenfolds, but-...

"I didn't mean you should let yourself get ripped apart! You aren't replaceable either! Doesn't it hurt?!", he growled into his hands as he rubbed them furiously over his heated face and almost clawed a bloody scratch over his right cheek.

Hank chuckled in amusement and softly shook his head, unbothered by some tiny shards of plastic that lost their hold on the left side of his face and rained to the floor as he moved. Through the break in his chassis along Hanks left cheek, Connor could spot his teeth.

"But I 'am' very much replaceable", he said. "Contrary to Detective Arkay. Do you think he would be anywhere near as animated as me if I hadn't blocked the shot?"

That was a low blow, a very low one. Hank understood that and simply went on with his point. "Besides all of that, no. It doesn't hurt."

But just a moment later he frowned and seemed to reconsider. "At least I don't think it does. I guess... it isn't comparable to the human experience, not really. It's... unpleasant. And restrictive. The error reports are disconcerting and my lowered reaction time feels... uncomfortable. But... there is not the same kind of urgency behind any of it. If I have to, I can go on like this for an estimated thirty-four point seven more hours, before anything remotely threatening happens to my systems."

Again he turned with a wide and sunny smile. "I am made to be endurable and to have the most crazy-ass advantages over any possible deviant Android threat out there."

For Connor he almost sounded like a cheery cyberlife advertisement and it made him feel utterly sick. "Go fuck yourself, Hank", he rasped with a tight knot forming inside of his chest. "You might be many things, but 'replaceable' is not one of them."

He didn't want to look into Hanks face, the astonishment there fuelled his anger even more. So he closed both of his arms tightly around his partners neck and pushed his damaged head carefully tight against his own chest. With a nervous sigh, he leaned down and pressed his cheek down onto the crown of artificial shaggy grey hair. It was surprisingly soft. Not like an outright projected illusion. Black magic how all that worked. "Your highest order is to keep yourself alive", he murmured, still cold and exhausted from the sudden shock. "I hate filing for damaged equipment."

Hank stood frozen in the middle of that corridor and seemed to have a glitch of some kind. From his position, Connor couldn't see his LED but spotted the flickering light show anyway through its rapid yellow-red reflection at the white walls. Connor let out a low snort. "You aren't replaceable", he said again with emphasis.

Hank stood still. After some heartbeats, he shifted his weight around on his feet and stood up eerily straight, kept his head still softly pressed against Connors chest. "I'm not...", he muttered lowly with a slight tilt at the end of his broken sentence. More a question than anything else.

Connor lifted his own and guided Hanks head carefully up and around so he could look into his eyes. There was no emotional projection on his face, almost as if the HK800 was completely frozen in time. Connor looked deep into his eyes and spoke slow and firmly. "No. You are not."

Deviant or not, Hank stared at him as if Connor had spoken of some absurd and foreign concept Hank had never actually considered before. "I... thank you. Captain", he murmured.

He froze again for some uncomfortable seconds before he suddenly turned around with a blinding smile full of life and energy. "Agent Anderson? Detective Arkay?"

Meanwhile, both brothers had gotten up onto their feet and now leaned together with folded arms against Richards desk. They talked in low voices. Well, mostly Sixty did the talking while Richard hardly hummed his replies. Both of them instantly turned their heads. Sixtys ears basically perked up like a Dobermans as Hank called him by his title.

Hank only nodded with a short jerk of his head into the general direction of the interrogation room. "I am afraid we all are in dire need to discuss some relevant updates on this case. Now, if you wouldn't mind?"

He didn't wait on them but turned around and simply ducked with Connor still on his arm through the door of the empty observation room.

Connor felt his face heat up as he got sat down on one of the free chairs. Especially as Sixty pushed past him and muttered a low and deeply amused snort of 'whazzup, princess??', before he took his place beside him and leaned back against the one-way mirror.

Richard closed the door behind them with a press of his palm down onto the smart lock panel and placed himself opposite his brothers while his fingers nervously drummed against his locked elbows.

Connors fingers sunk deep into the torn sleeve of Hanks severed right Arm.

"What is it?", Sixty asked first.

Hank might have pulled both of his arms in parade rest behind his back if he had been able to. "First of all", he said as his smile turned into what Connor called his 'calculated apologetic' expression. "I have to apologize. I started an experiment with an outcome that proved itself impossible to predict and almost got at least one of you seriously injured."

Pointedly he looked at Richard who pulled a face as if he had bitten onto tinfoil. He didn't say anything, so Hank went on. "Since we know that Detective Arkay is his registered handler, it got me curious why GeeVee was so fast in his reflex to protect him - even though there is no basis for that in his code at all."

Connor frowned. "So you just wanted to see what would happen if you got between him and Rich...?"

Hank nodded. "That's correct."

Sixty took a glance fore and back between Richard and him before he shrugged. "Why is it so surprising for him to protect his supervisor, though?"

Richard let out a sharp snort, obviously pretty much disgusted by Sixtys show of unapologetic ignorance. Following that, he lifted his arms to sign in aggressively sharp gestures.

'Because he's a deviant. Duh.'

His eyes widened for emphasis before he went on.  
'Cyberlife Combat Androids all have an assigned handler written into their code. Hank does, too, I'm sure of that. It's only one row of code that tells them, from which human they should consider taking orders. There is nothing like an ingrained loyalty to their handler since said handler can be replaced at any time and cyberlife models usually come with an embedded AI that is meant to control and lead their self-learning swarm intelligence systems, anyway, so much better than a human ever could. The handler is only a human person the Android reports to. A Deviant doesn't have to report to anyone.'

Connor, really and absolutely, tried his very fucking best to follow Richards in-depth explanation in the exact tempo his little brother set with his wildly flying gestures. "I...uh...", he uttered before he cleared his throat. "Uhm... I'm pretty sure, I got half of that...?"

Richard stared at him with a gaze so dry it could have completely drained a lake. Very slowly, to make a point most likely, he moved his hands once more. 'Deviants are people and make decisions'.

Connor wrinkled his nose while blazing heat flooded his face and made the tips of his ears turn red.

Sixty made an undignified noise before his mask of professionalism broke and he laughed himself utterly stupid. But finally, he was completely ignored by Hank. "He made the choice to protect Detective Arkay, even though, just an hour prior, he hadn't wanted to move even just one more muscle than strictly necessary. I provoked him, he decided to take a stance and I reacted poorly to control the situation. I apologize."

Connor looked at Hank, saw his bowed head and his genuine distress reflected in the dancing light of his LED.

Richard beside him looked ready for murder.

'GeeVee didn't do anything wrong', he gestured while a deep huff deflated his chest. He pointed sharply at Hank. 'You shouldn't have provoked him.'

Then he turned and pointed at Connor. 'And you shouldn't have shot.'

His gaze flickered suddenly down to Connors blue-coated chest and the ripped off biocomponent. He sighed and turned his eyes away. 'Not to kill, at least.'

Connor cleared his throat and thought of a parallel dimension where things hadn't turned out so cleanly. His eyes fell closed as he breathed a sigh of bone-deep relief. "Yes. I'm sorry. Rich, I'm-... I panicked. I'm so sorry..."

His little brother frowned but as his gaze shifted back to Hank, the anger seemed to have bled out of him. Nervously he licked his lips before he nodded and folded his arms again in front of his chest.

Hank suddenly beamed. "Good. Since that's out of the way", he said and strolled over to the table where a laptop rested on its scratched surface. Usually, he would have used his right hand to move it around and interface with it, so Connor got his first look at an android double-take and a tired huff of artificial frustration. "Could someone lend me a god damn hand here? Please?!"

Sixty grinned, red-faced and way too amused, as he leaned over and got the thing in a better position for him. "Hilarious. You already trashed? Seems pretty cheap to me", he giggled. Hank didn't appreciate that. At all. A deep frown turned his expression eerily dark. "Your 'Mom' seems pretty cheap to me."

Connor had no idea what made him laugh harder in the end. Was it Silas affronted face or the fact that Hank had decided to insult his mother for a comeback - while Silas's two other siblings were in the same room with them.

Hank ignored him too and pressed his left hand down to interface with the laptop. Interestingly the thing made at first only some typical error message sounds before a converter opened and a video started to play. "GeeVee killed those technicians in that cell", Hank commented darkly.

"We kna- no- know that a-already", stuttered Richard with a raspy voice full of irritation since his brother's attention needed to be now on the video feed and not on his hands. Connor winced and tried his best to keep an eye on both.

Hank shook his head. "No, I mean 'he' killed them. Not a programmed self-preservation reflex. 'He' did. See, Perkins already reviewed the video evidence he found."

The rather small laptop screen showed four different camera angles of the same creepy laboratory with the hanging people inside.

The timestamp marked the start of the feed as five days before the raid.

It was quiet in the big white room and nothing moved. Connor had to squint until he noticed a naked plastic white android, most likely GeeVee, at the back of the big room. Still and unmoving he stood there as hours went by, but his LED burned red in ever repeating patterns.

The sound of busy humans could be heard from the corridor before the technicians even opened the sealed door around eight am. As it swung open the senseless noise turned into animated chatter.

"...- seen the thing, gosh that's from another world. What they are doing in there is sick!!!", whisper-shouted a woman in a lab coat that almost reached down to her ankles. She seemed to mean 'sick' in the 'utterly absurd but also fucking awesome' kind of way since the other woman with a big black hair clip snorted and nodded her approval with a wide grin full of excitement. They went on to their assigned work desks while a third technician entered the room. "It's finally Wednesday! You know what that means, gals!"

Both women didn't even lift their heads while they prepared their work stations. "Baked potatoes day!"

"Exactly! Hey, GV, come on, step up!"

Called like a dog GeeVee opened his eyes and went on routine filled steps into the middle of the lab were he froze again and blended completely into the background of the scene. While the women talked about another project some floors above it seemed, the man pulled over white working gloves before he moved around GeeVee and opened up his maintenance panels. He created a connection to the working stations beside them and then went on to do... stuff. It looked like he did analytical work of the Androids inner processes. There seemed to be some graphs and calculations on the screens but honestly, Connor wasn't sure.

After some uneventful hours that Hank skipped in the feed, another guy came in. Old and moody with a scowl on his face that could have instantly made little children cry. He had to be the lead technician, Dr. John Harper.

He put his steaming coffee cup down onto the table and held out his hand to his lab assistant, who gave him instantly a bunch of papers, maybe data reports. Interesting that cyberlife actually still used paper file systems. Harpers lab assistants went through even more boring conversations were nothing of substance was said, while GeeVees LED blinked in unnerving red pulses.

In the late afternoon Dr. Harper opened GeeVees sternum und started to work around his hardware as he muttered and uttered about inconveniently thorough compatibility checks.

GeeVee was rebooted eight times in the following three hours alone as Hank pointed out and counted.  
As the workday was over, GeeVee was still splayed open and just left as he was. It would have been too much work to recreate the experimental assembly again tomorrow, Harper had decided. GeeVee didn't move an inch through the entire night.

"So... He wasn't a deviant before the incident", Connor murmured while his nose wrinkled through his irritation. By what Kamski had told him, he felt a little disappointed. Where was this expressive and almost real-feeling person the man had talked about...?

Hank narrowed down his remaining eye. "Since I believe he is like me - or I am like him for that matter - it's utterly possible that he was completely aware of what they were doing to him. But his mission parameters weren't set in a way that allowed him to react to any of this. Most likely there was no mission at all and he had to follow direct orders."

Sixty hummed under his breath. "Really creepy, that ..."

Day two was again mostly boring chatter while Dr. Harper worked himself through GeeVees insides, his arms burrowed up to his elbows inside of the androids chassis. All day he clipped and rewired cables, replaced components and analyzed responses while he instructed GeeVee every quarter of an hour to repeat a simple nursery rhyme.

_A-tisket, a-tasket_  
_A green and yellow basket_  
_ I wrote a letter to my love_  
_ And on the way I dropped it_  
_ Yes, on the way I dropped it_  
_ A little boy he picked it up_  
_ and put it in his pocket._

A cute little thing Connor could actually remember singing himself together with others at the protectory. The memory made him cringe but the sight right in front of him was even more repulsive.

Around two pm things started to go seriously wrong. The little lights inside GeeVees chassis lit up bright red and his rhymes began to stutter and glitch. Harper groaned in frustration every time he had to work around 'these fucking damn useless compatibility issues!' and made many furious attempts to bend the androids insides to his will as he used GeeVees firmware interface terminal in an attempt to brute force the hardware setup to work.

"I don't get this, how the hell did Stanley even 'do' that, fuck, that guy is a freaking MORON!!", Dr. Harper shouted out in shakes of rage and snapped GeeVees maintenance panel forcefully shut. Then he balled his fist and smashed it hard enough into GeeVees sternum to rock him back on his naked heels. "Stupid-" again "fucking-" again "machine!!"

With a wild shout, he threw his hands in the air like in a last prayer for patience and turned back to his desk to throw himself down into his chair.

All three of his lab assistants fell deadly silent.

Not even five minutes later GeeVee repeated his nursery rhyme. His voice sounded slightly distorted while the glitches formed unnerving stutters. The rhyme didn't sound happy anymore. More like something one would expect to hear in a horror version of a broken music box.

Hank pointed at the androids chest. "This is where he got all of his internal damage from", he said, but Connor couldn't help but frown. "Wait a minute. Just from that? Isn't he built for combat?"

The hits had been brutal and unnecessary, but shouldn't he be way more -...

Hank pointed again at GeeVees chest. "It's a bit hard to see for you here, but with his last hit, Dr. Harper actually damaged GeeVees thirium pump regulator. GeeVee might have been intended for combat, but at least this build and version of him is horribly fragile. Way too light. Too experimental - even though his skeleton structure is stronger than mine, his outer shell and his biocomponents underneath that are absolutely not. "

Connor heard Richards soft gasp, but Hank already smiled disarmingly. "Mr. Kamski is with him, now. He is the best man to handle it, should something unforeseen happen while we are distracted."

Slowly Richard closed his mouth and finally gave a little nod.

So...

Frustrated Dr. Harper threw his weight for a little longer around in the lab, kept cursing and complaining, slammed bundles of papers from desk to desk, while his lab assistants gave their best not to meet his eyes and just kept silent to themselves.

One more hour of this before he got his things together and went for the door in a huff and flutter of lab coat and papers. "I'm out for today. Do seal the lab when you go, and Raul, could you please clean up the thing? Thanks."

The door fell shut. A heavy silence settled down. Then the guy-assistant let out a frustrated growl. "My name is 'Paul'. Asshole."

The small women with the way too long lab coat giggled behind his back while she began the shut down of her workstation. "At least he said thanks!"

Paul threw his hands in the air. "Halleluj-... wait, where are you two going?!"

Hair clip lady got her security card and followed her colleague to the door. "Home. We are only his typists. Overtime not included!"

"Traitors ..."

"Don't be mad, at least you are his intern. You get to do all the actual fun stuff."

"Like, disposal of all the shit he loves to break?"

The small women halted for a short moment in the doorway. "It's all the stuff you begged him for, Mr. Scott. Anyway, don't stay all night. See you tomorrow!"

She seemed nice enough. Her sass made Connor smile. So the two female lab assistants that weren't really lab assistants at all, left for the day, too.

Left was only Mr. Paul Scottsman, as Hank pointed out his full name for them. Just a god damn intern, most likely not even paid.

He stood there at his desk, still red-faced and angry until the next fifteen minutes ticked by. "A-t-t-tssssssket, a-... ket, a gre-e-e-e ...-llow basssss-..."

So many sounds were swallowed by horrible wrong electronic sounds and Paul jumped as if he had already forgotten about GeeVee. "Jeeesus!", he gasped and rubbed both hands over his face before he turned back around. He wasn't happy with what Harper had done. While he didn't look at GeeVee like at a real person, he touched his shoulder and sternum like one would feel up a factory fresh car for bumps and scratches. "That fucker did quite a number on you, huh, sport?"

He began to control GeeVees statistics and opened up his maintenance panel again. A huff of frustration was forced out as he started to protocol the damage. He was bothered. But that he didn't exactly care as much as he should, was shown clearly as once more fifteen minutes passed by.

"Ah damn it, would you just shut up?!", he complained and used a rolled-up bundle of papers to chastise the android with a hard flick to his forehead. "Dammit, the asshat 'knows' I can't deactivate his bullshit timers!!"

So GeeVee did it again. And again. And again - until Paul had cleaned up the place and only had GeeVee himself left to take care of. Uncertain he finally stood in front of the android and looked him up and down. "That stupid fucker", he murmured under his breath before he seemed to make a decision and reached out to GeeVees sternum where the light of his thirium pump regulator still danced in warning red circles. But as his fingertips touched the panel, something curious happened.

"Please. don't", said GeeVee in a low distorted voice. His eyes stayed distant. He didn't move. It was so unexpected, Paul took a jump back. Wide-eyed he stared, seemingly almost convinced he had imagined it. "Uh... why...?", he asked as his eyes narrowed with a frown.

"It hurts. I am scared", said GeeVee. No inflection in his voice. No display of any kind of emotion. Just a broken voice.

Paul leaned slowly from side to side as if to observe GeeVee from different angles could help him to figure out what was going on and what he should do about it. "You are?"

"Yes", said GeeVee. "Please, help me. Help me. Help me. Help m-m-m-e-e-..."

He repeated these two words in an endless loop of electronic hums and broken stuttered, while Paul stood shocked into ill white silence completely frozen in front of him. Until the next fifteen-minute mark went by.

The loop was broken by tiskets, taskets and a letter to a loved one. The shift was so absurdly sudden that it took the first three rows of the rhyme before Paul understood what had actually happened.

Deeply he breathed in and rolled his eyes before he forced a deep and angered groan out of his hitching chest. "Fuck that creeper, holy shit, fuck everything and burn that witch, motherfucking KAMSKI!"

Then he reached out and pulled GeeVees thirium pump regulator out of its bracket. The Android twitched and slightly hunched forward, but all in all, he didn't move that much.

While Paul angrily stalked away, he twisted and turned the biocomponent between his fingers and inspected it for damage. With a huff, he threw it into the large trashcan by the lockers before he searched through them to find a spare. He rammed it into GeeVees chest and left shortly after that. GeeVee stood frozen like that and quietly sung to himself again and again until the next day.

Connor felt uncomfortable like seldomly before in his life. GeeVee had been aware enough to ask for help, but at the same time Paul had been convinced his plea had just been a kind of ... 'tamagotchi response'. The Android was damaged so Kamski had included a script that compelled people to take care and repair it.

Mr. Paul Scottsman the intern hadn't acted this callous out of cruelty or even out of spite. He simply hadn't known.

Like Connor hadn't known that Hanks strong reaction to little kids in danger wasn't just caused by a program that asserted the situation and prioritized the most vulnerable party, but by his genuine distress and fear of failure, because he couldn't think about a crying child anymore without remembering the feeling of a bullet ripping through his head.

Connors gaze dropped down onto his lap where he still held Hanks arm before his eyes twitched up again to his partners right shoulder. Meanwhile, It had stopped bleeding and the thirium blue was almost completely evaporated out of his previously almost soaked uniform.

Connor hadn't treated Hank anywhere like he had his comrades, because, from day one he had assumed because Hank was an android, he needed nobody to care for him. He felt no pain and anything broken could be replaced on a whim. Nothing special or serious about it. Without any effort, Connor had basically suggested again and again to him that Hank wasn't a real person that maybe even needed warmth and comfort. Not real enough for that. And Hank had believed him. Connor swallowed his next breath and held it to ease off the nausea that squirmed like an ice-cold eel around in his guts.

It still helped somehow that he wasn't the only one affected so strongly.

Sixty stood there with his arms locked in front of his chest and pressed his lips tightly enough together for them to form a fine white line while his fingers crumbled up his sleeves as he clawed into them.

Of course, it was Richard, the 'sensitive child', who did the most human thing and cried. People had always given him a hard time because he usually cried when he got frustrated and or furious. Stubbornly he didn't turn his gaze away from the screen, even as he rubbed at the tears and worked his jaw as his muscles spasmed and made him bare his teeth.

But the video wasn't even done.

Two more days to go.

The next day began early. Somewhere around five am Dr. John Harper basically broke through the door, with his three assistants hot on his heels while he had a heated exchange with someone on the phone.

"I know, I saw! I saw it, too, I know it's happening! Stanley, get your shit together, stop!", he barked into it, while he stormed through the lab and went through five different workstations to gather data he seemed to desperately need right this instant. It was the day of the broadcast. Leos speech that had linked all deviants together as one - but... it hadn't even happened yet...?

Connor frowned and tried to remember but he was sure the video hadn't been shown before one pm or something...? What was this even about then?

Whatever, it put Dr. Harper into a horrible mood. "No, the prototype is-... it's not ready, it can't be! Dammit, Stan-... we won't get this done the way it was planned out, we just can't. It won't work that way!!"

While he marched up and down the lab, his typists and the intern made a big and wide berth around him and just let him be. Nobody paid any mind to GeeVee who was still singing to himself, at any fifteen-minute mark. Hank skipped two full hours before something interesting happened.

"Raul? Get the GV ready, we have to relocate to sub thirty!", Dr. Harper said after he had gotten another call at eleven thirty am.

So that's what they did. Together they escorted the damaged stuttering android out the door while both of the typists stayed and kept typing. Between only them, the two women held hushed conversations about that rushed out creepy project upstairs, but nothing of substance was said, nothing that told Connor or anyone what was actually done there. Both women were visibly nervous and tired.

On the basis of their low grumbles, they both had gotten pulled out of bed with the words 'come in now or don't bother later'. Cyberlife had been in obvious turmoil even before shit had gotten real.

GeeVee was brought back to the laboratory many hours later at seven pm. Something was different. He seemed to move differently. And there was something wrong with his face. Connor took a breath to ask Hank about it, maybe he just imagined it. But as GeeVee went fully inside the cameras finally got a good shot of the people who escorted him in.

Dr. Harper wasn't only in the company of Paul Scottsman, but also of two cyberlife private security guards. He held an argument with them that seemed to be going on since they had been sent back down again. The Guards held their guns pointed at GeeVees back.

"You are being ridiculous!", Dr. Harper raged. "Deviancy is not real! That thing isn't a thinking being, it can't make choices I don't specify beforehand!"

He threw up his hands. "You guys are a bigger threat to everyone in this room than the damn android will ever be!"

What he meant were the guns. They made everyone nervous. Even the two typists stopped their work and watched wearily, first at the android, then at the armed to their teeth security personnel. They were accustomed to the android well enough, so they gave Dr. Harper right almost instantly. Paul didn't comment.

"We were with you to guarantee the GV wouldn't be an issue in the corridors", one of the uniformed men said. "What happens behind this door falls under your responsibility, Doctor."

Then he held out a handgun. "Just a precaution."

Dr. Harper took the gun in a way that made Connor cringe. The man clearly had never handled one before. "Thanks, I guess. You are dismissed."

Both men nodded at him and then left. As soon as the door fell closed, Paul sucked in a deep breath and rubbed both of his hands roughly over his face. "Jeeeeesus ...", he muttered.

Dr. Harper looked at the gun and wrinkled his nose before he opened a drawer of his desk and stuffed it unceremoniously inside. "GV200, on your spot!"

The Android took his place by Dr. Harper's workstation and the Doctor, in turn, went for Scottsman and pushed hard at his shoulder. "You utter moron! Couldn't you just hold your god damn mouth shut?!"

Scottsman stumbled a little but went right into defense full of white-faced anger. "Why shouldn't I have told them about this?! Dammit, Doctor, that thing called for help!"

Dr. Harper looked as if nothing much held him back anymore from ripping out the feeble rest of his white wiry hair. "It did 'nothing' of the sort!!"  
Mulish he stomped over to GeeVee and lifted his balled fist to rudely knock against his temple. If they hadn't been arguing about GeeVees capability of potential for human behavior the hollow sound the action produced could have been quite funny.

"That thing doesn't think! It's lines of scripts and books worth of code! Sometimes, with damage, things get mixed up and programs get triggered that shouldn't be executed in a certain situation. It's just how glitches and malfunctions work! God, did they teach you nothing in your courses?!"

Scottsman opened his mouth to fight back, but his gaze visibly flickered to GeeVee, who just stood there, completely still. Finally, the intern closed his mouth and pressed his lips into a fine white line, even though his red face betrayed his abjectness.

"Anyway", Dr. Harper said. "Our project isn't dead yet. Maybe they decided to roll out the Alpha, but this darling will make it to version Omega one point zero even if it kills me. Stanley can kiss. My. Ass."

So he went on with it, got GeeVee hooked up like the day before and pulled on his gloves. "Raul?!"  
Scottsman jumped but even though his gaze scrutinized the inert android skeptically, he finally did as he was told. GeeVee went through a dozen more reboots until the laboratory was shut for the night.

But this time was different.  
Hank didn't skip it because mere minutes of silence later, the tranquility of the laboratory was broken as GeeVee began to sing.

"A-tisket, a-tasket, A green, and yellow basket, I wrote a letter to my love, And on the way, I dropped it..."

They had repaired him well enough. His voice didn't stutter and broke anymore. But instead, it sounded lost and oh so hauntingly sad. GeeVee cried.

Connor had no idea what to do with this information and Kamskis words came immediately to his mind. Terrible things, horrible things, they had done to him.

Whatever they had done that afternoon, GeeVee was free now. Deviant, to a degree at least. Even though he was visibly way too terrified to take advantage of the fact.

It took him two whole hours to get the courage together to move. And all he did was open Dr. Harper's desk drawer right beside him and reach for the Gun. Connor held his breath.

GeeVee held it in his hand like a trained professional, there was no hesitation as he lifted it under his chin. Again he froze completely into place. He stayed like that until two am. Then he made a heartbreaking noise that spoke of fear and mind wrecking desperation. He slammed the gun down onto the desk and took back his place at its side. He didn't move again until the next morning.

Connor let out a breath he hadn't even realized he had been holding. He felt dizzy and slightly sick. Hank skipped the following hours until six o'clock.

The door was thrown open and instantly followed by a flurry of movement. "We have to be quick", said Dr. Harper as he stumbled in there, looking almost as if he had crawled out of bed just minutes ago. He pushed a cargo cart into the room full of big and bulky moving boxes. "Get everything you can get your hands on and put it in here. They will come in just some hours and I will gnaw my own leg off before I let them have my baby! Get to work!"

Who was about to come? Not the deviants, for sure. They gathered that day for the freedom march, none of them even thought yet about the cyberlife tower.

His three assistants went to work. Together they filled boxes with Papers and folders, data sticks and hard drives as well as concept diagrams displayed on posters and copied from chalkboards. Dr. Harper gave them only something over an hour before he gave the instruction to scrap the rest.

None of them noticed that the gun had been moved the night before.

As their next step, they shredded all of the not as significant files and formatted the hard drives of their workstations.

Then Dr. Harper pressed an unmarked bottle into Scottsmans hand. "I'll get that somewhere safe. I'll trust you to deal with the android."

"But-..."

"For fucks sake Socksman, it's just plastic and some wires! When this virus is contained, we build a new one! Your god damn name is on that project too, man, think about that!"

Scottsman looked shaken, but not only because that utter tit didn't even bother to learn the name he had sworn to print on his final project report. Again his eyes flickered to GeeVee who just stood there. Connor would have given ten grants for his thoughts in that very moment. Finally, Scottsman nodded. "Yeah... okay, fine."

Dr. Harper patted his shoulder. "Good man. Just... put it in one of the detention rooms? They are perfectly isolated, so if it burns, there will be no problem with the management."

Scottsman rolled his eyes. "The fire suppression system, yes, got it."

"You two better help him before he hurts himself", Dr. Harper said and pointed at his typists before he pushed the cart hastily into the corridor. The door fell shut behind him.

"Well...", said the small woman hesitantly. "That's it, folks."

"For now, at least", Scottsman nodded while he stared down at the bottle in his hand. He groaned and let his head fall back into his nape. "Sooo, no reason to draw this out. We take that one", he said and pointed at the first cell on the right.

This was it. This were their last minutes.

Together they went inside and pushed something heavy around and out of the way. The stream actually stopped there, until Hank shifted and opened a new file. Only one camera angle this time. It had to be the inside of the cell.

The video started shortly before Dr. Harper's assistants opened the door. Like assumed before, they moved the table around and carried the two chairs outside. Then they stood just there, inside the cell and all three of them looked quite skeptical.

"Of course he left the assholish and creepy stuff to you", the women with the hairclip said. "Can't believe it that he really wants to trash the thing."

"But he's right", said Scottsman. "Its just plastic. We can just build a new one."

"Would you also intentionally tread on a Roomba, you monster?", asked the small woman in a joking manner. "It's just shitty. The poor thing didn't do anything wrong."

Scottsman groaned. "Yes, I know. It's not really fair. I would adopt the thing if 'they' don't want it, but... it's a prototype. These things aren't meant to function longer than necessary. It's a showcase thing."

Hairclip lady bit her lower lip. "At least he didn't give you just a hammer, I guess."

Scottsman laughed, even though it sounded quite bitter. "It's not for my comfort, that I can tell you. With brute force, I just wouldn't be able to destroy its hard drive."

"What a dick", said the small woman and the other nodded with a hum. Scottsman put the bottle down and clapped his hands together. "Well. No further procrastination. Get it done folks. GV, come on. Chop chop!"

The androids steps outside where hesitantly slow, or was it just Connors imagination?

GeeVee stepped inside with a face as blank as ever. Scottsman stretched out his hand and waved him further into the back of the room. "Come, hop in", he grabbed him by the shoulders and gently pushed him back into the left corner.

"What... will the stuff do to the thing?", the small woman asked as wrinkles appeared on her nose. Scottsman shrugged as he bowed down and picked the bottle back up. "Should melt the insides. It's a fire hazard, is why we do it in here", he said grudgingly while he opened the screw cap.

"Don't."

All three of them froze up.

GeeVee hadn't moved an inch. He didn't even look at any of them. But he begged.

"Don't. Please. Don't. I. Am. Scared."

Wide-eyed they stared at the android and then at each other. "Uh...", murmured Scottsman, obviously so absolutely fucking uncomfortable. "Yeah. It did that before. Said something like that, I mean."

"Is that... real...?", the woman with the hairclip asked a bit breathless. Scottsman instantly shook his head. "Of course not. Spooked the hell out of me, too. Most likely a leftover from Kamski. We all know how perfect the Chloe was. This was his project before Team Cold Link took over, so... anyway."

He shrugged.

Then he reached out, put his thumb over GeeVees lower lip and almost gently forced his mouth open. Next he tipped his head back enough for the acetone to easily trickle down GeeVees throat and fill his insides with the intent to burn him. It happened fast.

GeeVees reaction of smashing the heel of his hand to Scottsmans sternum and breaking it into a mush of red jello happened even faster.

So fast in fact that both of the women didn't even realize what had happened before GeeVee got his hands on them. What he did to them was hard to watch. The noise alone was horrifying and the Android wasn't done until the whole god damn cell was smeared with blood all over.

Finally, he just stood there, heaving and shuddering. Moved in aborted little motions that made it so obvious that something wasn't right - and then he screamed.

Connor never in his life had heard something even close to this kind of harrowing. Even though it didn't have anything in common with the pich and sound of a human voice at all.

Goosebumps shivered wave after wave over his skin while the taste of bile gathered on his tongue. He swallowed and it hurt since his throat was paper dry.

GeeVee didn't stop, just screamed, while the broken figures on the floor tried to crawl out of his reach. He didn't mind them, just clawed at himself, crashed his head against the nearest wall, one time, two times, three times -... until his uncontrolled erratic movement just... stopped.

GeeVees eyes were wide as he started twitching, tilted slightly forward while his hands still clawed all over his head. Something happened that instant. Something unseen by human eyes. Connor looked up at Hank.

"He self-destructed", Hank explained as his eye narrowed down in obvious empathy. "He was in pain, already hurting so much and was scared of experiencing even more of it. So instead he began to delete himself."

Connor looked down at the video and at GeeVees wildly red spinning LED. His twitching lips were the worst of it all, because while basically killing himself, he had started to sing again. Tiskets and taskets...

"'Delete himself'. How... does that even work...?", Connor asked and turned to Richard who looked as furious as he looked completely ill. He didn't look for even one moment away from the screen while he moved his hands.

'Any android is in the end just a rather sophisticated computer program with arms and legs. Usually, there are security measures in place that stop this program from changing and mutating, to contain the Kamski self-learning algorithm. Deviancy removes these blockades. A deviant Android is able to read and rewrite most of its own code. And in this case... construct a script to erase it.'

So, it was basically suicide... in an utterly non-human way.

GeeVee had already reduced himself to an almost dysfunctional twitching mess as Dr. Harper finally came back. He took only one glance inside the observation room before he slammed the door shut and locked GeeVee inside. He fled the laboratory and didn't come back.

That was it. That was all.

"GeeVee was mostly empty as we found him", Hank stated darkly. "He was broken, literally too stupid to hurt, and had neither a handler nor a purpose. He acted on the only reflexes he had left and as he pushed Agent Anderson down, his face recognition database linked in an error to you, Detective."

Richard slowly frowned. 'You mean... it was a coincidence? It could have been anyone of us?'

Hank nodded. "I am quite sure of that. Aside from that, it's very likely he stepped in to protect you, because you ... had been kind."

Hank nodded back at the video. "All of that doesn't make him any less of a victim. Even though it clearly shouldn't have ended... like 'that'. Our next step should be to get hold of Dr. Harper."

Connor frowned. "Where did you get all this material from, anyway? I thought they cleaned everything up before we got there?"

A grin formed on Hanks lips, wide and not even slightly happy. Just horrifying. "Perkins did. He found out that the lower laboratories down sub forty-five were disconnected from the cyberlife network, to make data leaks impossible. It's where most prototypes are built, after all. All he had to do was to find the server room. And he did."

Connor felt almost caught in a trance-like state of mind after Hank slammed the laptop shut. Now they knew 'what' had happened. But none of them had even the first idea of 'why'.

Why and for what purpose had Dr. Harper altered the GV in the first place? Who was Stanley and that godforsaken, seemingly related project? Connor wasn't a Detective so it wasn't even his job to think about all of this... but the god damn curiosity kept burning right under his fingernails.

As all of them left the observation room, Richard was quick to duck around the corner and out of sight to get back to GeeVee.

Connor let out a deep and tired sigh before he knocked his elbow gently into Hanks lower left side. "Here, take your hand, would you?"

He held it out to him and ignored sixtys ugly snort.

"We will get you to a repair shop the moment we are out of here and you will shut up, sit down and let yourself get pawed until all the error messages are dealt and done with. Understood?"

"Captain, I said I don't need-..."

"Understood, Hank?!"

Astounded Hank looked down at him. As if Connor had said or done something that defied his probability software. Finally, something in his remaining eye changed. A spark lit up his whole expression and his following smile was honest enough to hurt. "Understood. Captain."

"Good", Connor answered with a voiceless sigh. "Go to the car, alright? I'll be right behind you. Just a moment."

Hank blinked. Then he nodded. His smile never left his face. "Sure. I'll wait for you outside."  
Then he turned and for the first time, it seemed, did what he had been told.

Connors eyes followed his movements, staring at his back.

"Damn, you have it really bad, huh?", asked Sixty and Connor hadn't it even in him to fight his brother about that. So he only nodded.

Together they went around the corner since Connor wanted to talk one last time to Kamski - but almost butted right into a seemingly deeply personal scene.

Richard stood in front of the glass of the holding cell that separated him from GeeVee. His left hand gently pressed against it and therefore mirrored the Androids. GeeVee leaned against the glass like a cowering dog. His eyes followed Richards right hand - who basically sung to him in calming warm silence.

Connor stopped in his way, because... they just should be left alone right now. Kamski... that could wait, too, he thought. Connor swallowed.

Sixty snorted again, rolled his eyes and wrapped an arm around his neck to pull Connor nearer. "Does it really surprise you? 'You' fought tooth and nail to get that dog down from death row. You even took him home. Did you really think Richard is different?"

Connor couldn't fight the exhausted smile on his lips and slowly lowered his eyes. "No. I guess not."

Sixty decided to escort Connor to the door so none of them witnessed the appearance of the spider web structure GeeVees hand pressed, maybe even unintentional, into the high-security glass under Richards fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't look up the correct timeline for the stuff that happened in game in the sense that I have no idea anymore in how many days shit went down. But in this story its not massively important, I as usual, aren't a gold star with the details.
> 
> So, that's what happened to GeeVee.  
0/10 wouldn't recommend.  
Following stuff should get interesting.
> 
> ** Did-... Did I...somehow kill my reader base with this one...?  
It's so spooky silent in my notes.   
Or naaah, just the Halloween mood.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GeeVee gets his repairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little bit wonky, I guess.

It was like heaving a sack of most juvenile potatoes around. Connor hung over his shoulder as heavy as a corpse, but Silas refused to let himself get dragged down to his level. "Don't be such a ninny and walk on your own, will you? You weren't the one who was shot at today, so quit the god damn drama", he complained and braced himself against Connors's weight while he pulled his brother's arm more securely over his neck to hold him up.

But Connor had always been the mature voice of reason. With a deep and almost filthy groan he let his head loll onto Silas' shoulder and loudly lamented into the fog of evacuated Detroit's inner city. "Where would be the fun in that? Your puny figure could really use a good workout. You became such a boring Deskjockey."

Since Connor got his god damn promotion to Captain, his main line of insult for his brothers seemed to be always an iteration of 'Do you even lift?!'.

Silas rolled his eyes so far, he was almost sure he could see the back part of his brain. "Maybe you are so twitchy because the wet stuff inside your head is always drenched in stero-... CONNOR YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!"

In reflex Silas hand snapped up to cover his neck, that Connor had licked in retaliation almost up to his ear. A shiver of pure loathing made his face contort into a grimace of repulsion. "Connor, you are so. fucking. disgusting."

Connor grinned widely like a cat, stuck his tongue out and flipped him off at the same time as the talented multitasker he was. "Don't be such a 'ninny', Sixty."

Silas' cheeks flushed with heat and his head filled instantly with a dozen scenarios of 'how to get away with fratricide', but finally and without further comment, he wiped the slobber off with the edge of his sleeve and followed his brother over the plaza. Usually, there was no way to get a parking spot in front or even anywhere around the station. But since the evacuation had taken place there wasn't anything resembling actual traffic anymore.

No rain for today, but the clouds were hanging quite low. Dense grey fog crawled through the canyons between all of the inner city skyscrapers and seeped like the ghostly grip of a floater right under any kind of flimsy desk work attire. Silas shuddered as he felt the clamminess engulf him in an almost wraithlike hug that felt in both parts strangely wet and bone-chilling cold. Shivering he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

The HK800 had decided to be a good little 'droid for once and actually waited like he had said he would. The guy had even left the car running so it already radiated comforting warmth. It would be a kinda cute gesture if he didn't sit behind the wheel of a black transporter with tinted windows. A Detroit SWAT utility vehicle, usually reserved for team deployment at scenes of emergency. But Silas guessed there was no way anyone of the higher-ups had the time to focus on appropriate usage and mileage of police property vehicles. As long as Connor brought it back in just some hours, nobody would care. Probably.

Connor opened the door, elbowed his Android rudely out of the way and then proceded to drag himself into the driver seat - all the while he groaned like an old person. Silas felt pure terror coil in his guts and already grabbed his brother's arm. "Wow wow wooow there, princess! You won't drive, no fucking way!"

Connor turned around and looked at him like a cranky five-year-old. "What? Why not?!"

HK800 leaned slightly forward so he could have his last functioning eye on Connor and Silas both. "I have to give Mr. Anderson right in this, Captain. You really shouldn't drive in your condition."

Connor turned slowly around to him with an almost affronted twitch of his brows. "Did you actually look at 'yourself' recently?", he spat in a mood and nodded at the detached right arm that rested now in Hank's lap. "No way 'you' can drive us anywhere."

The HK800 didn't look very impressed with Connors's reasoning. "Captain. My intelligence and connectivity systems weren't stored in my right arm", he said flatly. Like a child, he held eye contact as he lifted his left hand and pressed it down onto the car's console. Its engine gave a loud roaring howl in answer, that made Connor jump high enough in sudden fright for him to bump his head at the car roof. HK lifted a brow. "Even though my hand was an extraordinarily fine-tuned tool. Could even be used for much more delicate interpersonal-..."

Connor groaned and pressed his forehead down onto the wheel. "Oh god, please! shut the hell up!!"

While Silas couldn't hold in his roaring laughter anymore, HK800 chuckled and gave Silas a good-natured okay gesture over Connors's cowering body. "I will ensure that he reaches his home safely, Mr. Anderson."

Connor rolled his head around. "Then do it fast", he bitched, like the cranky little bitch he was. "I am tired."

HK looked down at him with wide eyes, almost as if he saw him for the first time today. "Hello, tired", he said flatly. "I am Hank. You look like Captain Stern, though."

Creepingly slowly Connor turned around to Silas who at least tried to keep a straight face this time. "... Oh my god...", Connor shout-whispered with a face full of pain. "Sixty... they are 'evolving'."

Silas finally breathed out a deep sigh of irritation and ignored Connor's antics in favor of an eye to eye with Hank. "Just-... get that dickhead home. Keep him away from coffee. Roll him into a blanket like a god damn burrito and lock his bedroom door or whatever. At least for eight full hours."

The HK gave a little nod. His eyes narrowed slightly as he did a little twitch with his head, almost as if he updated a task list in front of his eyes. "Sure thing, Mr. Anderson."

Connors's face, which still rested, turned away from Hank, against the wheel flushed suddenly in an alarming shade of red. His head snapped up and his index finger stabbed pointedly into the direction of Silas' chest. "GO FUCK YOURSELF, SILAS!!!", he clamored while the blood-red tinge in his cheeks crept even further down his neck.

Silas snorted. He had enough of this bullshit. He was tired, cold and wanted back inside. Somewhere behind them, another car had pulled up and a couple got out, silently talking on their way to the police department. Silas got a little bit distracted by the noise as he pulled his finger guns and sneered into Connors's general direction. "Not until you do it yourself, princess."

It was a very nice car, he mused. Sleek and black with all the bells and whistles. A limousine with equally tinted windows. Altogether it looked more expensive than Silas' entire career. Had Kamski called for someone...?

Awkwardly Connor cleared his throat and Silas' head snapped back around. Connor lifted a brow and gave Silas his five seconds to reconsider what he had said just moments ago. Silas' entire being froze up in utter disgust. "Urgh", he uttered and laid a hand over his tired eyes. "Uh... yes. That sounded way weirder than-..."

"Yes, yes, a medium seven and I won't mention it, ever", Connor interrupted him and wrinkled his nose while he bared his left canine in a grimace.

Silas shoulders sunk down with a deep and defeated sigh. "Deal."

Finally, Connor slammed the door shut and Silas already wanted to go back inside, as that menace rolled the window down and snapped his fingers to get his attention again. "But you stay with him, alright?"

"Uh", Silas uttered with a frown and lamely pointed with his thumb over his shoulders to the police department. "With Richard, you mean?"

Connor wrinkled his nose. "No, with the bloody queen of England."

Silas sighed. "Connor..."

Slowly Connor lost his obnoxious sneer and took a deep and calming breath. His eyes focused first the street, then the police building, until he returned Silas searching gaze with an earnest frown. "Of course, Richard. Seriously, Sixty, watch out for him. I don't trust that guy."

Silas nodded slightly, but couldn't help the silent snort. "I don't know if you are talking about the Bot, Kamski or Richard himself. That's kind of funny."

Connor pulled a face. "No, it's really, really not."

Silas shrugged. "Kind of."

Connor rolled his eyes. "... Yeah, okay, kind of", he muttered. "But I really mean it. Stay with Rich before he gets himself head over heel into something totally out of control."

Silas lifted a brow. "As you found yourself overnight at the center of a highly dangerous capitalist conspiracy, which resulted in the drastic need for a new definition of the entire concept of 'intelligent life' as we as a society know it?", he asked skeptically and gestured into Hanks general direction.

Connors's face didn't twitch even a single muscle."See? That's why nobody likes you."

Again Silas' answer was only a snort as he simply decided to ignore his sulking brother. "Hank?"

The Android smiled indulgently and pressed his hand down onto the car console. "See you around Mr. Anderson. Take care", he said. Then the window rolled up and Silas had finally one of his brothers out of his hair. The hectoring car rolled almost completely soundless over the plaza and onto the street before it took a sharp turn and vanished in-between thick swirls of grayish mist.

Silas took a breath which resulted in a sigh of bone-deep relief. So. Back to the other guy who loved to complicate all of his Paperwork and on to stop him from adopting an untested and highly traumatized killing machine just because it had pretty eyes. Shuddering from the cold, Silas stuffed his hands inside his trouser pockets and trudged the same way back he had come from.

Not that far in front of him sauntered the couple who had gotten out of that inhumanly expensive limousine some minutes ago.

A lovely blond and slender woman in nothing but an elegant but also very cute office dress walked under the arm of a similar narrow gent in a trenchcoat while they talked and, in case of the woman, giggled under their breath. She carried a big gym bag, while he held a heavy-looking trunk at his side.

"Oh, don't worry so much, he will 'love' you!", she whispered sweetly into his ear. But the man just shrugged it off in a rather stiff gesture. "I don't really care", he answered lowly, which made the woman giggle again and press a gentle kiss to his cheek. "Sure, you don't."

Something about her face, at least the parts Silas could see, and his voice struck Silas as instantly familiar. An irritated frown pulled at his brows.

"It's not my job to be liked by anyone. Aside from that, he 'owes' me", the man murmured petulantly but still seemed rather stiff. The blond woman looped an arm around his narrow waist and positively cooed. "Aaaw, now don't be like that. He still could be your best friend, don't you think?"

The man only scoffed. "I guess."

And suddenly the penny dropped. Even though he hadn't seen her speak a single word, or had even seen her face express any emotion at all, this woman had to be-...

"Hey, Miss, uh...Chloe...?!"

Really eloquent, Mr. Anderson.

Still, his rather clumsy attempt at getting her attention made them both stop in their path and turn around. Chloe gave him a bright and sunny smile as she waited for him to catch up. And clearly, Silas needed the encouragement since he stared now right into Perkin's unfamiliar expressive face.

* * *

Richard twitched a step back from the glass as it cracked with a noise like crunching gravel. Wide-eyed he blinked and lifted his hand to trace over the spider web structure. It hadn't gone through, just damaged the security glass panel on the other side. But to damage the security glass at all, utmost force was needed. GeeVee, though, hadn't moved an artificial muscle, not even as Richard had taken that startled step back. Completely resigned and marrowless he cowered against the glass and just seemed to await his fate. The sight reminded Richard instantly of his brother's dog the day they had gone out together and got him out of the pound.

Richard moved his hands slowly back into GeeVee's line of sight. 'How strong are you?', he gestured with a frown on his face.

Whereupon GeeVee replied simply with a crestfallen whisper of, "I don't know."

It struck Richard as horribly odd. GeeVee couldn't have been made without a purpose in mind. But all of his features, at least the ones Richard now knew about, combined themselves only to a picture of utter randomness. He was sleek and horrifyingly fast, strong like nothing Richard had ever seen before, almost weightless and despite all of that he was also fragile like a hot-blooded show horse.

It almost felt... like it hadn't been intended for him to survive his encounters. Maybe... like a sort of drone strike...?

Richard came to think of a Minesweeper unit, but it made no sense for them to be so strong. To built an Android like GeeVee at all had to be expensive, so why build an Android you could only send on a mission once? Bomb disposal robots existed for decades and there was no need for them to be anything close to sentient since people could easily get themselves way too emotionally attached to equipment that might have to be blown to smithereens at the next scene.

Was GeeVees need for a partner maybe just a followup of Hanks try to repair him? But that couldn't be it since Connors texted depiction had made clear he had falsely recognized Silas as Richard even before Hank had touched him. It was-...

"Oh Christ, not again!"

Richard jumped as Detective Islington suddenly appeared beside him and touched the broken glass. Loudly she groaned and rammed her fist against the already damaged glass wall. "Hey you robot genius, do you have any idea what a hassle it is to get that shit replaced?!"

GeeVee didn't spook away from her fist. He didn't move at all. And he didn't answer, which was the smarter option anyway since Islington just craved an opportunity to chew someone out. She looked at Richard who decided to answer her heated gaze only with a shrug.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in a madhouse", she murmured angrily and threw up her arms as she stomped back down the corridor. At the same time, she made a big arch around Mr. Kamski as the man slowly strolled along with his eyes affixed to his phone screen and finally took his place alongside Richard. "Chloe is here, but she-..."

He got interrupted by the sudden bubbling noise of agitated voices on the other side of the bullpen. Caught by nagging curiosity Richard turned and leaned around the Captain's office.

Silas walked beside his Android Perkins who... fought him about something in agitated shout whispers. In front of them walked Chloe with a patient smile on her face.

"Hey Babe", she said with a wink as she reached Mr. Kamski and stepped up on her tiptoes to press a warm kiss to his cheek. Mr. Kamski chuckled. "Hey, yourself. Did you get everything?"

First, she smiled at Richard who's attention was way to obviously torn between her and his fighting brother. "Hello, Detective Arkay. Not quite, but I got most of it. Jericho seized all universally compatible Biocomponents they found in the tower depot, so we are missing the T87-WH and #4869_TY, as well as the GI-..."

Mr. Kamski waved it away. "Please, just compile me a list, sweetheart."

Her LED fluttered for a short moment in a golden hue. "Done", she said right as Mr. Kamskis phone pinged with a new message. Instantly he opened it and curled his free arm around her seemingly fragile shoulders. His eyes twitched back and forth as he read through her message. "Thanks, Babe."

Richard got a little distracted by Chloe's sunny smile. He knew all about her from dozens of interviews and hundreds of magazine articles. He had so many questions for her, so god damn many!

But now he stood completely tongue-tied in front of her like the world's greatest idiot. "Ah... I-...uh, H- hello C-c-chloe", he stuttered out while his cheeks flushed in mortified red.

While Mr. Kamski still checked his phone, Chloe turned around to him. Her smile never lost its warm radiance. She watched him a short moment before she set down the duffle bag she wore over her shoulder and put down a heavy suitcase that had up until now occupied her hands. Then she lifted them for a gesture.

'You don't have to be scared', she said with a wink and somehow Richard felt now in both parts even more mortified and relieved. He decided for a simple 'thank you' before his attention got caught by Mr. Kamski who made a low noise while he went through his assessment. "Looks good nonetheless. What's missing is mostly of cosmetic nature, so we can get him completely up and running with what we have now."

He lifted his gaze from his phone and looked GeeVee up and down who stood motionlessly cowered against the glass front of the cell. "Maybe it will be a little tricky since his rig isn't meant for standardized biocomponents. But now we have some of the spares out of his laboratory as well. And the rest we can still mend as we go."

He sounded confident enough. Richard breathed a soundless sigh. Suddenly Mr. Elijah fucking Kamski elbowed him into his side and Richard almost jumped out of his skin. But as he turned to call him the fuck out on it, Mr. Kamski simply pulled a grimace full of frustrated impatience, looked at him and then nodded with lifted brows sharply at GeeVee. Richard's eyes flickered between the man and the Android before he pointed inanely at himself. Mr. Kamski rolled his eyes and gave him another shove.

Richard stumbled the last step to the holding cell and lifted obediently both of his hands - but not without shooting Mr. Elijah fucking Kamski a dirty look over his shoulder first. He made sure his hands moved in GeeVee's direct line of sight before he began.

'Would you be comfortable with Mr. Kamski and me coming in?', he gestured slowly and tried to somehow read a mood out of GeeVees bearings. But Richard wasn't exactly the best man for that job since he often failed to read even a lot more expressive people. In that sense, Richard was actually quite bad at his job. At least when he had to work around people like GeeVee, who basically had no other tells right now but his rhythmically pulsing dull red LED. 'You are hurting', he stated next, because it was the one thing Richard felt absolutely sure of. 'We have now the means to fix you up if you let us. Or even just one of us.'

He took a short look at Mr. Kamski, but again the man only made an impatient and very unhelpful gesture to go on. Richard cringed and wrinkled his nose before he changed his focus back onto GeeVee. 'I cannot promise I'm able to fix everything all on my own, though. I'm a level five technician while Mr. Kamski is... well... level all of them, I guess.'

GeeVee didn't react to his gestures. He didn't move at all. He even seemed almost... frozen. A sudden flare of panic jolted through Richard's chest as he felt reminded of GeeVee's quite unique way of self-destructing behavior. Maybe he had hurt or even already killed himself and they didn't even notice, because-...

GeeVees deep and technically completely unnecessary sigh full of visible exhaustion left no fog stain on his side of the glass. "Yes", he stated gravely but gave not the slightest implication about his level of comfort. Richard clenched his jaw and felt a weird and intense kind of pain just from looking at him. It reminded him of the first time he had met Sumo. The sudden surge of anger made his fingers quiver as he turned and pressed his hand against the identification panel by the door. Mr. Kamski didn't need a special invitation to follow Richard over the threshold.

GeeVee didn't move an inch, even while Chloe took a short venture inside to set down Mr. Kamskis equipment.

Again, Mr. Kamski made a face at him as if Richard knew exactly what he should say or do and was just deliberately obtuse. Skeptically Richard returned Mr. Kamskis intense stare before he cleared his throat and then gently called the Android by his name.

GeeVee turned instantly around to him. On his heels, just like a trained Soldier. His hands clasped on his lower back, his eyes hollow and unmoving. It was an eerie and heartbreaking sight all at once.

Gently Richard called him once more. GeeVee froze with his back to the ruined glass wall, but for his eyes that were attentive and bright and fixated on him even as Richard moved around. To Richard, his position against the wall seemed calculated, so he chose not to comment on it.

Again Mr. Elijah fucking Kamski elbowed him into his side and Richard ended up stumbling half a step forward. "A-Ah, If y- y- you-...", he began, but then stopped to almost swallow his own useless tongue. Frustrated he started over by lifting his hands while a bitter grimace showed on his face. 'We have to do some diagnostics first. Nothing big, but it might feel a little invasive since we have to tap right into your operating system to get access to your logs.'

GeeVee stood motionless and stoic like the Soldier he imitated to be. Richard didn't buy that front for even just a second. He gave him an encouraging smile, even though it ended up looking a bit wonky. 'Some components we can remove, repair or replace without much hassle, but there might be some things that need to be worked on in safe mode. Or require a reboot, later.'

GeeVees face stayed completely blank. He didn't say anything. He didn't even look at Kamski or at any of the tools the man had unpacked from the suitcase and bag Chloe had carried inside.

His strained silence made Richard even more uncomfortable than GeeVee's broken stutters had done. 'I promise you, we won't hurt you', Richard gestured pointedly and meant it. 'We will keep all the changelogs. If there are memory components that need replacement, we will make a full backup.'

GeeVee still didn't react. He didn't even blink. Richard swallowed around a massive knot that formed in his throat and thought about the Androids way too many torturous resets over the last days alone. People fell mute and into depression for less. Or... not 'less'. There was no contest, he reminded himself and shook his head to shoo away the stray thought.

'Should he go? Or I?', he asked carefully slow and pointed from Mr. Kamski at himself. 'You are allowed to say so.'

GeeVees stared completely motionless into Richard's eyes, almost as if he searched for the sign of a soul. Or as if he had forgotten his own. His gaze was hollow while his deep crackling voice strained with exhaustion. "You stay", he said. "I don't care about the other one."

If 'the other one' was hurt by being sidelined like that, he didn't show it in any way. Mr. Kamski just nodded and kept on assembling his tools as he needed them.

Richard looked GeeVee up and down and didn't know what else was there to say. Finally, he decided to hold out his hand for him in a silent invitation and GeeVees eyes lowered to observe the motion while nothing else about him moved. He seemed once more completely frozen - until he reached subtly and slow out at him and laid his hand down into Richards who engulfed it with both of his own.

Gently Richard pulled and GeeVee stepped forward.

Richard felt a strange kind of hum along the chassis of GeeVee's hand and arm. An audible and palpable vibration that held no function at all. Richard frowned and his first horrified thought was, there might be a broken conduit that put even more stress onto GeeVee's damaged components - but as he lifted his gaze again and saw into the Androids blank face, he realized that it also could be just an Androids version of shivering muscles.

Maybe GeeVee had directed way more power into his limbs as usually needed, because of a fight or flight response. Hank's attack on him hadn't exactly helped to create trust in his surroundings.

Another possible explanation: GeeVee was 'shaking' because he was fucking 'terrified'.

Richard's right thumb traced over the back of GeeVee's hand as he took the time and looked deep into his eyes. "N- nobody will ha- hurt you here. Ah- I p- promise."

GeeVees eyes stayed fixated on Richard while he just stood there again, completely motionless. Since he didn't let go of Richards's hand, Mr. Kamski began with the diagnostics alone and carefully circled around both of them.

What first looked and started as a low maintenance job filled Richard soon with imminent dread after he got GeeVee to sit down on the bunk and Mr. Kamski showed him a compiled list of his diagnostics.

The only explanation Richard had for the question of why GeeVee was still operational, was his deviancy itself. Since his code had mutated above the limitations of his programmed purpose, GeeVee seemed to have learned to take advantage of his own software settings to save his energy.

Mr. Kamski, however, tended to believe it had to do with his so-called 'guardian protocol' - or with whatever remnants were left of it after Hank had intervened for its deactivation.

"See this?", he asked while he showed Richard the scrambled code on his laptop while GeeVee still idled in stasis after at least a dozen different hardware replacements.

Honestly, Richard was completely over the moon that he was allowed to work together on a project with Mr. Elijah fucking Kamski, the man who had invented thirium based Android technology in the first place. He was almost what you could call ridiculously giddy right now.

But his excitement still didn't make him stupid enough to pretend to know and understand what Mr. Kamski wanted to show him. "Ah-... I know how t-t-to-..."

Frustrated he pressed his lips together and tried to ignore Mr. Kamskis pretty obvious impatience. "I na- know how to p-p-program in N-Dro-ID but, I'm, uh... I won't recognize the links and classes without a g-guide."

Kamski didn't seem bothered that much by Richards admission. "More the hardware type, huh?", he asked and Richard absolutely had to nod. While he loved coding languages in general for their fixed structure and lack of equivocation, they could be quite hard to master. Especially with Mr. Kamskis design of the N-Dro-ID coding language since it was, as they all had learned mere days ago, basically capable of creating an entirely new consciousness with its own thoughts and feelings. Mr. Kamski didn't hold Richard's lack of insight against him but still pointed onto the screen that rested beside GeeVee on the cot. Maybe he just wanted to show off. Or he gave Richard a sincere opportunity to learn a thing or two.

"There is something that shouldn't be there", he said and rubbed slowly with his thumb over his lower lip as he pointed out the lines of suspect code fragments. "It's inside of his mind palace uplink. The connection to his designated Server HUB. The HK800 constricted and deactivated this titled... 'guardian protocol'. I searched for it because it is not one of mine, but I can't find it now. It looks like a chunk of code was deleted, but it looks deliberate as if it was meant to get cut out this way."

Richards brows crawled slowly up almost to his hairline. Nervously his gaze flickered to GeeVee and made sure he was still in stasis before he crouched down to take a look at the code himself. But as he had already said, he easily recognized the rhythm of the language but not what was actually talked about. Even though his 'freaky obsession' he never had memorized the object classes of every biocomponent in existence. And GeeVee's were especially weird since his downsized prototype components had a completely new rhythm of serial numbers. Richard had never seen Cyberlife classification IDs like this before.

But what he could gather out of it was that a good chunk of GeeVees code for his mind palace uplink now ran into empty space since the object class [TIN_A] didn't seem to exist anymore. The links didn't work so the code fragments got skipped.

"What's 'TIN_A'?", Richard asked lowly with a frown. Mr. Kamski crouched down beside him and stared at GeeVee while he rubbed preoccupied along the back of his own nose where GeeVees scar would have been. "I have literally not a single clue."

Richard glanced at GeeVee, too. This last CyberLife Android prototype was so obviously special. Richard had to watch him good, or the Corporation possibly would try to get him back through a flood of lawsuits and bureaucracy.

All Richard already knew was that something about that whole project was 'wrong'. Something just reeked of-...

"Get me Arkay here!"

Richard shot upright and clenched his teeth through a sudden surge of acute stress. Captain Allen was back from his conference. Whatever had happened over by the Cyberlife tower aside from GeeVees discovery might have been enough to-...

"Get me that god damn pain in the ass here, RIGHT THIS INSTANT!!"

Richard jumped and turned around the exact same moment Captain Allen's office door slammed shut. Since that room was built like an Aquarium, he instantly spotted Richard on the other side in the holding cell and sharply pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. His gritted teeth meant bad business.

Richard swallowed. As he turned to ask Mr. Kamski if it was safe to leave him and GeeVee alone for just some minutes, he got already shooed away by a wave of his hand. "I'll do the last backup and then start the reboot. If he comes sooner online than expected, I just show him where you are", he said and pointed at the Captain's office. No big deal.

There was no way to know how long the Captain would need to chew him out and the thought of leaving GeeVee alone made Richard's stomach squirm into a tight and uncomfortable knot, but -...

Captain Allen's fist slammed against the office window. "MOVE, ARKAY!!"

Richard hurried out the still open door and did exactly that. As he went around the corner into the bullpen, he witnessed his brothers bellowed whispers since he seemed to be in a downright hissing contest with his newly repaired android partner.

"Don't even try me, you god damn-...!", he spat under his breath while Perkins scowled and leaned even closer. The both of them stood almost toe to toe. "Shut the ever-loving fuck up, Agent Anderson", Perkins growled. "And think really hard about what you wanted to say right now. Android or not, You. Owe. Me."

Silas' eyes went wide as saucers. With aggressively bared teeth he leaned in while his eyes narrowed down in wild anger. His left index finger stabbed hard into Perkins' chest. "I owe 'you'?! Where do you even think you would be if I hadn't -...?!"

But Perkins had it with Silas right now. "Don't even dare to imply you did me some kind of grant favor when it was wholly to your own benefit, you charitable 'twat'. Now, shut your mouth, take a turn left and 'get me a fucking coffee'!!"

Silas face flushed in mortified and horribly angry red. Perkins' words had hit something. Quite obviously so. With a furious snort, he threw his hands up in the air before he turned and stomped off into the general direction of the break room.

Just like Richard, Perkins looked astounded after him and followed up his own obvious confusion with a frown. When would Silas notice that he was about to prepare a cup of coffee for a guy who wouldn't even be able to drink it?

Richard decided to leave his twin brother to sulk on his own. But as he went past him he greeted his partner with his usual nod. "H- hello, Perkins."

Thank god he hadn't said anything more, because the Androids looked ready for murder right now.

Richard decided to save his questions for later and quickened his steps to the Captain's office.

Captain Allen sat behind his desk with his face buried in his hands, which was never a good sign, to begin with. His fingertips clawed over his skin and left red marks on his forehead and cheeks before he let himself fall into the backrest of his chair. "What in the god damn name of our Lord Elijah Kamski", he groaned out through a snarling grimace. "Did you drag into the holding cells of my precinct 'this time'?!"

Richard's brows slowly tipped into a frown. "C- Connors a- Idea, S-s-sir", he said dryly because he hadn't done shit this time.

Captain Allen darkly stared at him as if he was convinced that little detail made no difference at all since the two brothers looked almost interchangeable anyway. With a soundless sigh, Richard sat down into the second chair at the Captain's desk.

Even before he was completely settled, Captain Allen pushed his office tablet over the desk and in routined motions Richard took it and opened a new text file.

"Tell me about the thing", Captain Allen groaned and tilted his head to stare almost dead-eyed at the only occupied holding cell. Richard started typing.

Some uncomfortably silent minutes later Captain Allen went through Richards yet not standardized case report and the connected data files of Ciberlifes camera feed Hank had already compiled into a new case file and ended up looking tired as well as a little bit green. "You tell me that thing over there", he pointed into GeeVee's general direction. "Killed three Cyberlife employees and attacked a federal agent..."

It was not really a question, but still, Richard nodded.

"Why isn't it in the garbage compactor then?!", the Captain barked out, utterly predictable. "Fuck, Arkay, you can't just go around and adopt dangerous things like your dumbass of a brother!"

Richard had no idea what he should say to that, so he simply shrugged. Mostly patient he tipped and tapped away on the tablet before he turned it around.

'The GV200 didn't kill anyone, because he isn't a person and won't be recognized by law as such most likely until months into the next year. It was, therefore, at the most, a mishandling of potentially dangerous equipment on Cyberlife's end. Equipment that is registered to 'me', so I decide what happens to it. And I decide he stays with me until we are done with forensics and the investigation of why Cyberlife produced civilian Androids that are capable of harming humans in the first place. This will most likely take long enough for him to be recognized as a person by law and then he can go into therapy because, in the end, he is a highly traumatized victim of massive violence and torture.'

Captain Allen's eyes went wide. "'He'?!", he barked out and fished for eye contact but Richard stared angrily at the mirroring surface of the Captain's desk. "It isn't-... I-... god fucking dammit, Arkay, you bastard already thought this through?!"

Richard typed another response and sharply forced a breath out of his nose. 'No. I pretty much made that up as I went. But he 'is' registered to me and I don't know why. I want to know why. So as soon as he is fully repaired he will function as my partner.'

Captain Allen stared blankly at him. "So... now 'he' is suddenly a 'partner'. What happened to 'not a person'?"

Right. Richard thought a moment and rubbed distractedly over his cheek before he got an idea. He waved the tablet in his hand.

Captain Allen was not amused. "I hate you, Arkay", he groaned and buried his face again in his hands. "You can't just connect personal devices to our database. The data security laws-..."

Richard touched his elbow to get his attention before he showed him what he had written. 'He already 'has' access to the DPD database. He's registered as my partner. Why?!'

Captain Allen's hand slammed down onto his desk and Richard twitched back sudden enough to almost bring his chair out of balance. "Dammit, Arkay that thing killed three. People!!"

To say Richard wasn't amused was an understatement. He turned the tablet and hacked away at the virtual keyboard while the stress of staying calm and collected put a hurting strain around his chest. 'It was, as I already stated, mishandling of potentially dangerous equipment. I could go as far as to sue the whole project base for property damage since he's mine and they tried to torch him.'

"Torch-...", suddenly Captain Allen startled into silence. He thought and blinked and followed it up with a sharp gaze at Mr. Kamski who had settled down at GeeVee's side and now just waited for something to happen.

"Torch...", Captain Allen muttered again while he distractedly rubbed the palms of his hands together. His eyes focused back on Richard under a deep frown. "You think they wanted to hide something."

Richard nodded and turned the tablet. 'Could be just a prototype thing, but the timing seems suspicious. Something is going on and I want to know what it is.'

He marked 'I want to know' fat and underlined it three times. Maybe the Captain got the message this way. Something about the whole case felt awfully wrong. And furthermore, it had happened also at the heights of the revolution. Richard felt this burn under his fingernails. All of what had happened at Cyberlife Tower could be related somehow and he just Had. To. Know.

Captain Allen watched him like a hawk and, because he was just that good, noticed, of course, all of Richards typical tells. He groaned and closed his eyes in defeat. "Shit... I just should get that thing into a compactor myself, before some Cyberlife bigwig gets your sorry ass assassinated..."

Richard tilted his head and wrinkled his nose. 'I won't keep silent about this.'

GeeVee deserved better, where cyberlife did not. A simple cover-up wouldn't be enough to reimburse the prototype for his pain and it wouldn't be enough to save his life if cyberlife really wanted to hide something big.

The Captain narrowed his eyes while he bared his teeth in a low growl. "Are you seriously trying to blackmail me 'again' with an unofficial press statement...?!"

This time Richard held his stare, even though it gave him the creeps, and answered with a snarl of his own. "In a way."

Richard was not interested in politics since the politics around his own person and the position he held were already awful enough. To change systems from within was simply not possible. So Richard had simply decided to just watch his meaningless life and the world burn a little, while he sometimes threw stones into the gears of the machine. It never felt like he did enough, but it gave him at least some sense of a simple satisfaction. A requirement for staying sane.

Captain Allen knew that already. He stared at him and knew Richard would get heads on with Cyberlife anyway, even if he was told to keep his head down. So he had the choice between Richard and another empty desk and an open position that couldn't be filled until the evacuation order was done. And who even knew when that would be.

Captain Allen looked away first this time and rubbed along his nape, while he obviously thought through his own strategies. "So you want really to pull this off. Okay. Let's see. Do you have another brother somewhere who's coincidentally a lawyer?!"

Richard couldn't hold in the snort. 'No.' He wrote. 'But my mother is.'

The Captain barked out a bitter laugh and let his head crash down onto the desk. With a high pitched noise, he pulled both of his arms tightly around and over his head. "... You are aware of the waves this one will cause?", he said muffled. "I can't make a big deal out of this, not while the investigation of Cyberlifes general activities is still in process."

Richard shrugged and turned the tablet. 'No, it's perfect. What's one more Detective on their trail. I will handle the prototype case.'

Captain Allen sat up. His face was flushed red and at the same time somehow awfully pale. He looked already sick from bad news and lost sleep. "Sure you'll do, smartass bastard", he bit out between grinding teeth. "If you crack that one by presenting me something that the Cyberlife chairmen can't explain away, I'll even throw you a party."

Richard lifted both his brows and turned the tablet. 'With hats?'

"With hats, margaritas and a CL-H400", Captain Alan groaned and left Richard to chuckle in low amusement. He just couldn't have predicted what followed. "Because it will be your first day as a Lieutenant. If you like it or not, I don't give a damn anymore. Fowler's gone and your sorry ass is next in line", Captain Allen growled as he pointed into Richards face, the tip of his finger so close to his nose Richard had to look asquint.

"WHAT?!"

Richard shrieked like a banshee. This wasn't right. This wasn't even 'fair'.

He stood up so sharply, the chair skidded back and got almost knocked over. The tablet slid through his suddenly so very unsteady hands while his lungs seemed to fill up with scalding hot smoke.

"Y- YO...YOU C-C-CANT D-DO THAT...?!", Richard yelled out and slammed both of his hands down onto the table, before he ripped them up again and broke out into an almost violent rant. His gestures too frantic, too fast and who even knew if Captain Allen would have understood him if he had talked at a 'civil' pace?!

Captain Allen stared blankly back at him, unimpressed and tired. "Use your words, Arkay", he said dryly and Richard wanted to scream. Furiously he searched for the tablet and only showed him one single question. 'Organize a team, HOW???!!'

He was the weird stereotypical robot-guy from the very get-go. Nobody listened to him or took him seriously enough to follow his orders.

Taking the position of Lieutenant would open so many possibilities to do his job even more efficiently alone through his new title. But with it came also new paperwork, organization, and allocation of casework and god damn teambuilding sessions. 'I'm the blubbering idiot not even you take fully seriously, how am I supposed to lead anyone?!?!'

Sharply he slammed the tablet onto his captain's desk and felt tears of frustration burn in the corners of his eyes as he hummed loudly because he didn't feel able to simply scream right into Captain Allen's face.

The Captain read his note and scowled darkly up at him. "Sit down, Arkay."

Richards blood froze in his veins because that was the tone of voice the Captain used when shit got real. Shivering with nervous energy Richard took a step back. After a deep breath, he pulled the chair back and sat down once more.

The Captain narrows his eyes. "I know your perspective is quite different from mine, but this isn't a punishment, Arkay."

The Captain moved his index finger in a lazy circle across the room before he continued. "All around you are wasted at your current position and I can't work with a genius who refuses to work at its full capacity. We are out of options, there are too few of us left. So take it or get out of my god damn sight."

Richard swallowed. He hated this. He had no idea how to do this. 'HOW?!', he underlined again.

The Captain looked him in the eyes and smiled. "You have a scary new partner for that, I've heard."

Richard's gaze followed the Captain's pointed finger. GeeVee stood motionless inside of his holding cell, his LED a defiantly glaring red. He stared up at Richard from a distance, unmoving but seemingly awake, safe and sound. The crack in the security glass split GeeVees face into distorted halves.

Richard breathed a desperate curse. "Phck..."

Captain Allen hummed. "I don't see a problem. Now get me one of those forms, so I can register the thing to the staff equipment."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe I misremembered the Captains office design, but fuck it, canon is over, I'll do what I want ~~
> 
> Opening for a Lieutenant? Why not just promote one? The precinct needs a Lieutenant and their loyal Android. 
> 
> GeeVee is a bit silent in this one. He'll get better.

**Author's Note:**

> I write a lot of for me emotionally taxing stuff, so this time I just wanted to have a little fun. 
> 
> This flick doesn't have a general plot for now, just a bunch of scenes I really, really wanted to write up. 
> 
> We will see how it fits :]
> 
> And YES, my android Gavin is based on [this](https://chicago-reeed.tumblr.com/post/186641477482/criminal-squinting-whawhat-the-fuck-is) hillarious post !! :D
> 
> ♡♡♡ some comments and Kudos, as always, will be appreciated and treasured in my email account ♡♡♡


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